Our past is our future
by chocgirl
Summary: AU/ Alex and Piper; two brilliant doctors, both living in the present, with many parts still dwelling in the past. There's a lot of baggage and a lot of unanswered questions.
1. past is the present

1\. past becomes the present

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 _AN: Hi everybody. It's me (again). Anyway, this was a vague idea that popped into my head and before I knew it, had gone from just a concept to I gotta write this down. Apparently I can't help myself. Anyway, new chapter, new story. Enjoy. ( this is not related to my other medical fic despite the similarities.)_

 _(flashbacks in italics)_

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Hospitals are bad bad places.

Beyond the shiny lobbies and waiting room walls adorned with pseudo-inspirational commerical prints that encouraged people to pop even more pills and that it's _okay_ to see your doctor for any old thing — lay a hellhole that was cordoned off from the general public. It's a sort of alternate dimension where every dream a medical student ever had about the glories and inflated status of medicine became destroyed and flattened. The emergency room had claimed many into its bowels. Some hadn't lasted beyond a few minutes.

"Dr Chapman to the ER please! Dr Chapman." A tinny voice rattled through the hospital intercom with the sort of aggressive undertone that made anyone not want to go wherever they were being beckoned to.

Piper glances up from above the sheaf of papers she'd been scanning through, releasing a sigh of weary dismay. She'd just walked out of that place not even half hour and already they wanted her back? Clearly leaving two interns and a goddamn resident to hold the fort was not enough for them?

Sixty-eight hours and counting.

That's how long she's been on shift for and Piper's mid-thirties body had been screaming at her of just how unnatural that was. Hours that really fell into the inhumane category.

She makes a reluctant u-turn back to hell and all its tribulations, hurtling past the intensive care unit where she nearly collided with a bunch of witless second years.

Their apologies unheard she carries on. "This better be good enough for the clinical director to be called for," She mutters under her breath.

That's Piper by the way — clinical director of internal medicine. A title long enough to sound arrogantly respectable and short enough to beautifully roll of the tongue. She's practiced her would-be introductions in the mirror more times than she could count and considering she's been in the role for six months, the novelty still showed no signs of wearing off.

"Dr Chapman, urgently needed!"

"I'm coming. I'm coming."

So far nothing had titillated Piper's need for challenge and gore, instead the usual mundane rubbish of pneumonias, drunkards and malingerers had occupied the best part of her night.

Nobody had told her up until she'd been unceremoniously handed her first white coat, that there was nothing sexy about medicine save for the odd saved life, and even that didn't have the fanfare and histrionics so often imagined. It's not like Grey's or ER, and anyone who'd believed that was the case deserved to be put in front of a firing line and shot.

She pushes through the doors and re-enters what can only be described as barely controlled mayhem. Her selective hearing has already kicked in. She's slinging out her stethoscope, her much needed battle piece in this war zone made up of the sick and injured. Piper tunes out the cries and screams of pain, honing in on the beeps from cardiac monitors and telltale shocks from nearby defibrillators.

The spell is broken when someone suddenly jerks her back. She nearly collides with a gurney holding a bunch of trauma supplies but thankfully swerves at the last minute. Before she could curse and hiss, a voice cuts through.

"Where the fuck have you been?" Red growls at her her face flushed and angry. This was the face of someone who was barely holding together. Piper didn't blame her, even the most stoic of people were brought to their knees in this medical purgatory.

"What on earth do you think you're doing?" Disgruntled, she fixes her white coat back to its rightful place, "You can't just man-handle people."

Red doesn't answer the earlier question and instead crosses her arms and sighs belligerently. "This goddamn place is falling apart at the seams. There are three walking wounded diverted from Manhattan Gen, an amber code incoming and a possible sepsis in resus. I can only apologise if I interrupted your tea break or worse your beauty sleep."

Piper doesn't like the authoritative tone of Nurse Red's orders and even less so her glare that screamed _you're fucking useless but I have to put up with you for the remainder of this night otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my breath in even acknowledging you._

A wave of irritation courses through her — did she know she's speaking to the clinical director no less? A role that demanded a semblance of respect. The real reason was was she was exhausted and drained and probably close to burning out. Piper had not even an hour ago walked out of the adjoining rapid response unit where she and the team spent more than an hour trying to resuscitate a young man involved in a car accident.

It was a pedestrian vs car, the worst kind which always drew a solemn pause from the paramedics. The whole thing had been futile right from the start, unresponsive on arrival, plummeting vitals, but Piper had willed the team to do everything they could. Even as she glanced at the dropping blood pressure reading, she had known they were losing the fight. Half an hour of a flat green line and she had to accept she hadn't saved someone's father, son or husband.

The remaining trickle of adrenaline she still had left was not worth spending here not to mention the fact her patience had ran out about thirty six hours ago, add to that a horrible fatigue clouded her thinking. "Spare the goddamn lecture, Red. Where's the call?"

"Fourteen." Red conjures up a clipboard and reads out loud, "Male, mid fifties, confused and disorientated." She couldn't resist throwing in another jibe for good measure, "I took the liberty in performing the initial assessments. God only knew how long you'd be."

Piper snatches the curtains back of cubicle fourteen. She's met by two police officers and a dishevelled middle-aged man in a state of undress. A quick glance at his vitals dashing across the monitor above him told her he was doing fine for now.

"Found slumped over a park bench down at 60th. Disorientated, pupils normal. Possibly had a stroke or a brain bleed." The younger of the two reels off in an overly formal narrative full of unnecessary verbs and adjectives.

Piper has to hold back an eye-roll. Excellent, another cop who thinks he's fast tracked through medical school and can diagnose on the spot.

"He's not on the crime database, checks out clean. Dental hygiene intact." The other cop with the too big uniform adds. Round-faced and unsmiling, he regards her with an almost patronising lilt.

Piper barely nods. Thanks for that useless information Officer _Mc-Seen too many Law & Order episodes._

"Thanks officers. I'll take it from here.

Piper's already itching to get the hell away from here. Male and confused is probably the worst kind of patient anyone could be presented with, it quickly goes from doctoring to babysitting, and the diagnosis was often alcohol and or drugs related.

She's tired. She's hungry and Mr Confused shows no signs of becoming un-confused any time soon.

She sighed and wrote a few things in her clipboard. She's still unable to shake off the abrupt gloom. Within the span of a few hours she'd lost two patients. Piper felt certain that there had been nothing additional they could have done but there's always that sliver of a thought pushing through telling her that she hadn't tried hard enough.

Piper snaps her fingers at the overly keen intern who'd appeared out of nowhere. "Send off a full set: complete blood count, liver function, inflammatory markers. All of it. Oh and thrown in a toxicology screen in as well. Since we're here we might as well cover all bases."

The patient who'd been quiescent the entire time all of a sudden has come to the realisation he had all this man-strength to play with. Without much warning, he roars off the bed, catching everyone off guard. The intern beside Piper is younger than her, has clocked less hours tonight and so is able to dodge out of the way. Unfortunately, Piper's running on an empty tank and the last morsel of food to have crossed her mouth was no less than six hours ago which meant her reflexes were pretty much non-existent.

Therefore according to the strict laws of natural selection Piper takes the full brunt. The man lets out a guttural howl before he lunges toward her, the slam stealing her breath away. His elbow catches under her chin, the action slamming her jaw shut, a pulse of pain shoots straight up her skull, temporarily blinding her. Piper loses her footing and falls back — taking the cubicle curtain with her along with years' worth of respect and prestige.

"Ma-am, are you okay?!"

"Dr Chapman!"

"Piper!"

Piper quickly scrambles to her feet, which was proving somewhat difficult to execute — lights were shooting across her vision, her head felt so hot and heavy while a suffocating feeling reeled her insides.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." She muttered repeatedly, her words soft and shaky, still shocked. But it's the embarrassment that takes hold of her, an ensuing crowd had already began to gather around her, gasping and whispering at the spectacle that was her.

"Here." one of the interns awkwardly holds out of her stethoscope.

"Thanks." No sooner had she grabbed it, she starts backing out, out through the double doors and out into the corridor.

"Chapman! At least let us check you over!" Red calls out.

Piper's already too far down to hear. Flying blindly through hallways and trying forget the dozen stares stares of sympathy piercing into her. She rounds the corner, past the hospital library, not looking up from the floor the entire time.

She collides with someone, nearly sending her flying for a second time. It's Nicky Nichols, one of the residents. They're the same age but Nicky had flunked her exams too many times so was several years junior to Piper but that hadn't ever stopped her from treating her as an equal.

"Woah! Who's chasing you?"

"Sorry." She tries to push past but Nicky blocks her path. "What in the living fuck has happened to your face?"

Piper pauses, bringing a tentative hand to her face. The impact of the fall and slam to her face was just beginning to register as pain. A dull throb radiating from her jaw, making her lightheaded each time she moved her head too fast. "Just a patient who couldn't keep his hands to himself."

"Was that patient Muhammad fucking Ali?"

"I really don't feel like talking about it, Nicky."

"Dude, you gotta have that looked-"

Piper slapped her hand against the lockers, hard. "I really _don't_ want to talk about it."

"Woah, okay. Whatever you want." Nicky held her hands up in surrender. "Sorry for asking."

Piper leant against the wall, her hand still against the locker, thinking, she didn't mean to sound angry. But she's so tired. Too tired to chase her words down with apologies.

Nicky moves out of the way, looking at her sideways, all bewildered. Piper doesn't say anything, instead walks past. "I just need to go."

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.

.

It's dark when she pushes the door open but it's fine, Piper's been here enough times to know her way around. Nobody ever comes here: the storage room directly beneath the paediatric unit, located right at the edge of the hospital perimeter. Piper felt at ease here — here amongst the boxes of untouched scalpels, bandages and Foley catheters.

Sometimes you had to take a detour from the rat race and this was her place of refuge and tonight of all nights it was especially needed. She climbs down the wooden stairs that lead into the darkened space. She's already sighing a wave of relief when the familiar icy cold hits her face. But there's a new out of place sound that pricks her hearing, where it joined the usual steady hum from the overhead ventilator vents.

Her eyes finally grew accustomed to the dark, that's when she spots someone lying across the metal bench, obviously asleep.

Most likely one of the interns or residents escaping from the havoc above them. Piper didn't blame them, but this is her sanctuary, has been for as long as she could remember. Irrational annoyance drives through her, reminding her of just how much she need to be on her own for now. Just then the gnawing throb decides to make an appearance, nearly causing her to tilt sideways when a roil of nausea abruptly follows.

Piper flicks the light on, casting the space in an intense white light that spared nothing including the semi-dazed expression of none other than Alex Vause.

They regard each other for a moment until Alex speaks. "You look like you either want to kill me or possibly at least maim me." She chuckles uncomfortably.

Piper wordlessly watches Alex unfurl her makeshift pillow that was her white coat back into its original form before sitting up.

"Oh." She curls her fingers together. Piper's too lost for words, the throbbing in her head suddenly taking a turn for the worse. She blurts, "You're in my spot."

Of all the things she could have said. Piper blames it on the mild concussion, it does things to people's mental faculties.

"Oh really?" Alex makes a gesture of looking around, "I must have missed the sticker with your name on it and claiming this crappy bench."

"I've been here coming here for the last six months, surely you…" Horrified, Piper stops when her voice catches in her throat. She's on the verge of a very physical breakdown and the _very_ last person she wants to witness this, is Alex.

Alex squints her eyes and stands up just as she pushes her glasses on. "Hey, you okay?"

"I'm fine." Piper's voice sounds everything but. She waves her hands dismissively, a strange urge to run out of the room nearly overpowering her. It's been her response to most questions of late. "Just having a really shitty day."

She's already beginning to turn around, the door already beckoning for her, but a slant of light falls onto the bruises that had formed across the left half of her face and so Alex is already walking toward her, alarm wrapped around her question, "What _happened?"_

For a while Piper doesn't turn around, sets her jaw hard, muscles contracting painfully. She doesn't deserve an ounce of Alex's sympathy. The realisation makes Piper's chest curl inwards. She had done so well in avoiding her for the last few weeks, hadn't been able to look her in the eye for fear of becoming undone. It had been too much. Just too much.

"Nothing happened." It's the best answer Piper had and she's afraid she'll give the right one, so instead murmurs, "Look I'm going…thanks."

She shakes her head, Piper doesn't know what she's thanking Alex for. For caring? For being the first person who genuinely wants to know how she's doing? Something she herself hadn't been able to successfully do in the past.

Her hand is around the knob of the door, when she hears, "You want to talk about it?"

No. No.

She hesitates. The telltale warning of an incoming avalanche of tears prickling at the back of her eyeballs. "I'm going…I've got paperwork, admin, so much admin and I just...gotta go." Piper sank her face in her hands and struggled to salvage control, to stop the tears. Her cry felt all the more humiliating because _she_ was standing there, watching her.

A hand on her shoulder. "Piper…"

Piper shouldn't turn around. Shouldn't.

But the use of her first name suddenly feels as though she's getting wrapped into a blanket of familiarity. Blankets that smelled of lazy summers, spent cigarettes, and Alex. The past hits her like a tidal wave against a rock face.

When at last she managed to turn around and raise her head - she found herself looking straight into Alex's eyes.

"Let me at least have a look at you?" Alex holds up her hands, "Surgeon's hands, remember?"

"Alex-"

"I'm going to have a look, Piper. No ifs or buts." Alex's face looked completely serious. "Also apparently I stole your spot too, it's the least I can do."

Piper couldn't help but smile. She wiped her hands across her eyes, feeling yet another flurry of hot tears making their way down. She took a deep breath and released it. "Okay."

Alex softly laughed, "You sound not entirely convinced but I'm going with that then."

Piper sat down. Alex moved aside a couple of boxes to make more space. She slid an empty crate in front of Piper and also sat down. They shared a moment of silence that seemed laden with something Piper couldn't define. That's all it took, that unifying gaze to trigger a thousand memories, bursting out like a crate filled to the brim with water.

Alex awkwardly broke whatever had been there. Maybe it was nothing and Piper was just over-reading everything.

"Let's take a look."

Soon Alex's fingers were dancing across her jaw, gently palpating for any telltale signs of fractures. Piper found her eyes fluttering close, her muscles relaxing. She clutched the edge of the bench, a buzzing sensation travelling through her head.

Her touches were still gentle and tender. She hadn't changed. _Nothing_ had changed.

Piper gave a start of a pain when Alex accidentally touched a tender point. "Sorry...I promise, I'm nearly done.'"

"It's okay. I'm such a wimp. Just carry on."

She continued inspecting and feeling, one hand resting on her thigh. Piper could feel the warmth burning through the fabric. She couldn't decide whether to jerk her leg back or not. In the end she didn't do anything.

As Alex worked, Piper focused on her head, bent in concentration, her dark hair close enough to slide her fingers through.

Their eyes catch, "I think you're going to be fine, it's just a soft tissue injury, nothing a pack of ice won't be able to cure."

Piper said nothing, she finds her gaze drawn, once again, to hers. Her mouth was too dry, head swirling with unfamiliar emotions.

Alex glances up, their eyes locking for a moment too long. She awkwardly looks down again and mutters. "You should get some rest though. You look way worse for wear."

Piper clears her throat, "You think? I thought I looked picture ready."

Alex chuckled, rising to her feet. "Get some rest, doc."

Piper was happy she managed to do that; make Alex laugh.

"Thanks, though. You didn't have to do that." There's an uncomfortable moment where neither says anything, the hum of the diesel generators mercifully filling the silence.

"I better get back." Piper stands up, swaying for a precarious second. A rush of lightheadedness momentarily blurs her vision and she can feel the room spinning.

She probably shouldn't go back. She should go straight home, let them deal with the chaos up there. She'd been here too long, nearly having forgotten what her own home looked like.

Alex held out her hand to help her up. She grabbed her arm and steadied her. Piper gazed down at Alex's hand, feeling faintly surprised that she was still touching her. Alex too seemed taken aback by the unthinking contact, and she quickly released her.

Their stares bounce off each other and it's over before it had started.

"I'm going to continue my trespassing here, go before management catches you."

Piper mutters softly, "Thanks again."

Just then Alex did something with her face, nothing anybody would notice. But Piper did. She always had. A smile that was serious but watered down with amusement.

Piper blinked. A gust of nostalgia nearly knocking off her feet. That expression had just transported her back to their halcyon days, back to a time where those smiles had been abundant.

Back before it had all gone wrong.

.

.

.

 _"You shouldn't have fucking done that." Alex murmurs in a dangerously low voice, her lips grim and her expression deadfaced._

 _"No, Alex. I should have done this a long time ago." Piper whispered, her own actions not quite sunk in yet. "I'm the one who's been stupid enough to have covered for you."_

 _It's only when the flush of the toilet sounds that Alex's face crumbles into itself, pure devastation smothering her features. An almost child-like sob emits from some recess Piper doesn't want to know about._

 _She forces herself to look up. The empty bag still clutched in her hand, the edges of it digging into the skin._

 _Alex looked worse than how Piper saw her last — a horribly angular face, limp hair plastered across her forehead like she'd been swept back and forth through a hurricane. But it's the eyes Piper can't bear to fully look at. Eyes full of despair, tinged with that dull glint common amongst those kinds of people. It frightened her. But more than that, Piper was worried over what she'd do when she walked back out of this room, spun past the library and walked straight to the college dean, spilling months and months of anguish onto the table._

 _"You didn't." Alex's voice cusped on the verge of an emotional eruption. "You didn't do that...Piper. Tell me you've got more. Please."_

 _Piper doesn't walk out of the room. Doesn't spill anything to anyone._ _Instead she walks up to Alex, who was half-sat, half-slumped against the ceramic toilet - rocking uncontrollably. Piper drops besides her, holding onto her, absorbing the seismic shakes radiating off Alex._

 _The whole entire time Piper gently strokes her back, up and down, up and down, as she absently watched the water droplets dripping from the bath faucet, thinking whether this was going to be the last time for the hundredth time._

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 _AN/ Hope you've enjoyed it. I'm imagining this to head more into the couple of shot fic territory but we'll see. I'll keep you posted._

 _Happy 2017 :)_


	2. close your eyes and think of me

**2.** Close your eyes and think of me.

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 _AN/ Bottom of my heart thanks for the reception, you guys. Each and every one are you the best. Genuinely._

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Three minutes into the shift and Alex knew it was going to be dreadful. Three op cancellations, a code red in OR three, and one of her residents had just called in sick.

"Vause, your bypass and angio are about three hours behind."

Alex puts down the clipboard she'd been skimming through, thankfully her pager hadn't gone off in the last few hours which meant she could actually do some work before she was scheduled for theatre.

Alex stifled a groan. "Chief, with all due respect, it's not exactly my fault there aren't any beds in the hospital, those two ops would have been done eons ago if the hospital wasn't so over-stretched."

Dr Fontaine was a slight man with pointy eyes and greying stubble, who held laughably idealistic views over how a hospital should be run. He was all about the numbers, the image, and less about what actually happened on the ground. The man was just so out of touch with reality.

He sighs, crossing his arms together, "We've just gotten an outstanding rating, we really cannot afford to falter."

Alex near scoffs, the second doctors turned managerial it all becomes about meeting targets and counting pennies. She's sat in a few board meetings in her time here, and every time discussions turned heated which they often did, Alex could never resist interjecting with a _'what about the patients?"_ spiel. That got everyone to momentarily shut up and lower their heads in shame.

She pushes the door of the OR open and starts washing her hands over the stainless steel basin, wishing he would just go away.

"Are you listening to anything I'm saying, Vause?" He's still breathing down her neck. His unflagging persistence was beginning to irritate her, what he lacked in size he made up for in his attitude.

"We'll have a third cancellation if you don't let me get on with this one." Alex hisses through clenched teeth.

He's about to say something but has probably realised he shouldn't tread on the toes of the director of surgery much less dish out unfounded criticisms. Instead he makes do with a theatrical sigh that was supposed to be all threatening but to Alex it just sounds like a wheezing middle-aged man, hiding a chronic smoking habit. "Time is money, doctor. Try and remember that" He preaches just as he walks out.

Alex barely holds herself from rolling her eyes, almost inclined to point out the obvious irony in that, but carries on scrubbing.

There's a perfectly good reason why Alex had ticked 'surgery' on her application form some years ago. Surgery was cold and clinical. None of the _how are you feeling?_ rubbish. Cut there, take a tumour out, put the organ in, stitch up and job done. It's a simple formula that was so easy to follow and if done right, the rewards were almost immediate. She lived for that; the instant gratification. She couldn't deal with the long game, there were always too many casualties and never enough triumph

It was a straightforward case and she was in and out of the operating room in no less than an hour. After de-robing she detours to the recovery room for a quick cursory check on her recovering patient. Pressure was strong, anaesthesia nicely wearing off, they were ready to be de-tubed.

She nods to one of the nurses behind the plexi-glass who smiles and nods back; medical shorthand for everything is good here. Alex quickly scribbles a few observations into the chart and walks out, satisfied.

It's dusk when she eventually retires to the changing room. It's empty, save for a few residents changing into scrubs before the start of their night shift. Alex doesn't envy them. Instead she blanks them, and walks straight to her locker, gladly pulling off her stethoscope and pager before tossing them both into her bag.

She slams her locker shut, and leans her forehead against the cold metal. Memories she's carefully packaged and taped up start seeping out. Apparently not careful enough as she clenches her eyes shut.

Her subconscious has been replaying their storage room encounter throughout most of the day. And it wasn't so much the dialogue or their actions even, but the feelings that had coursed through her that evening.

Anger and happiness, happiness and then anger; a hybrid of emotions each trying to claim the top. She had barely been able to concentrate during surgery, finding herself drifting away too many times before her assistant would nudge her back to cold reality.

Alex wouldn't like to admit to herself but after Piper had left, it had been as though a noose around her neck had all of a sudden disintegrated. She hadn't even realised it had been there the whole time.

Their old familiarity had been so striking yet at the same time, Alex had felt an obvious discordance to their actions where they both didn't quite know how to talk around each other, all crickety and out of sync like a piece of machinery that hadn't been oiled for so long.

It makes her vaguely sick.

It had taken Alex less than an hour to nearly forgive Piper, she could barely imagine how she was supposed to keep on Not Forgiving for the foreseeable future. It terrified her, because sooner rather than later she'd falter, lose momentum and fail.

And that possibility fills her chest with icy anxiety.

The door swings open, voices carried over, filling the room with sudden noise. A group of people stumble in, a blur of blue scrubs walking en masse toward their respective lockers. Alex quickens her pace and shoves everything in all at once. She hated noise. The loudness of it overbearing.

She's about to walk out when she spots Piper amongst the crowd, stood by her own locker and staring after her. Their gazes meet, but Piper drops her gaze quickly to the floor. Alex clenches her eyes shut, and carries on putting her stuff away.

No indication that yesterday night had ever happened. No indication that Alex's existence had been acknowledged. The thought itself pisses Alex off, since when had she become so needy? Since when did she need pithy validation from _anyone?_

She glanced back up, if anything, Piper looked slightly alarmed, her eyes darted between the people in the room with them, as though worried they'd know that... what? _What?_

A wave of cold dislike rolls over Alex just like that, surprising her. It's unreasonable maybe, but there had always been a resentment hovering just below the surface, trickling over every now and again.

The door slams open and closed a few times until the room was once again emptied, the last few people brushing past them. Alex can see Piper's eyes following them out, an almost desperate tilt to them, like she'd wished she was walking out with them.

The only thing that probably kept her rooted to the spot was politeness more than anything else, a fact that really grates on Alex.

"Hey." Piper finally mutters, physically squirming.

Alex is almost inclined to check herself over and sarcastically ask whether there's something disgusting hanging off her. Yet she civilly answers back, "How's the face?"

"Fine, thanks so much again, Alex. You really didn't have to."

Piper leant back against the lockers, inhaling deeply, like she was going through the motions of a practiced speech. For an awful second Alex thinks she's going to apologise or acknowledge their past, but instead says, "I didn't think you ever came here."

Alex can read between the lines there. She hadn't always worked here, in fact, had only joined the team some weeks ago. The shocked surprise painted across Piper's face when Alex had been introduced by the board following her inauguration was something she still vividly remembered. She must have mirrored the exact same expression, probably much worse.

She had gone home that night and vomited until she felt as though her guts were going to drop out.

"Round five, nearly every day." _Write it down, so you'll remember to avoid me next time_. Alex almost adds.

"How was the list?" She hears Piper ask.

"Busy."

There's an uneasy lapse in conversation, until Piper rescues it and breathily asks, "You saw that announcement the Chief made about budgeting? It's pretty bad, huh?"

"I guess."

They stared at each other from across the room, the chasm between them suddenly so pronounced. They never had wasted their time on small talk, even at the genesis of their relationship. It shreds Alex's insides like it always did when she was reminded of random quirks of their past lives together.

"How have you been?" Piper suddenly asks, a question that felt as though it had lain dormant for the last six years. "You look well, Alex. You really do."

But it was a question that was about six years too late. Alex feels herself growing tense, her hands clenched. Six years, two months and three weeks. And only when effectively cornered does she ask how Alex is?

"I'm not off my head anymore, so I guess I'm not doing too bad." Alex glances back. "Wouldn't fare so well in this place anyway."

Piper fidgets uncomfortably at this crudely honest declaration. "That's good."

"Five years actually."

"Alex, that's amazing! I'm so happy for you-"

Alex nods despite herself. It's not enough. A scenario that's been on repeat for the last few weeks pops into her mind's eye now. A stupid, over-dramatic thought where they have a tearful reunion with over-the-top hugs and kisses, profusely apologise to each other, and then head to Alex's apartment where they'd fuck each other senseless. It was so disgustingly idealistic, more than that, it was fucking desperate.

Alex feels almost sick realising Piper may not have spared her one thought over the last six years while _she's_ been living like she'd been on borrowed time. She felt punch-drunk all of a sudden. "You married?"

"No."

"Boyfriend?"

"No."

"Girlfriend?"

"No, you?"

Alex doesn't answer, almost embarassed over how relieved she is.

"There was something brief a long while ago..." She trails off. It's painful to watch but Piper tries for humour. "I mean this job doesn't exactly permit us to have a social life."

"Hmmm."

"How's your mom?"

A vice slashes through Alex's chest and it nearly knocks her sideways. She already feels sick, reliving a moment she spent years trying to forget. She's almost jealous Piper had lived in ignorant bliss for so long. Angry, Piper didn't know, even though Alex had never told her.

Alex sits down, suddenly weak. "She's dead."

For the first time since acknowledging each other, Piper drops her restrained demeanour and nearly collapses into a boneless mass. Alex watches with strange clinical detachment her face crumpling into itself, racking sobs escaping from her, her back against the lockers. Alex has done her grieving in isolation, she'd gone through the nightmare of it: the frenzied funeral arrangements, the panicked realisation she didn't have any of her mother's friends contact numbers to tell them about it, and the eventual resignation that she'd never be able to utter a single word to Diane Vause ever again.

It's almost ludicrous to think that someone other than Alex would ever care so much about her mother's death. But then it's not so ludicrous at all when she thinks back to Piper and Diane giggling like old school girls when she spilled red wine all over herself one summer.

Her eyes twitch back to the present. Only now the present consists of watching the person Alex had loved, maybe still loved, or _never_ stopped loving, fold in on themselves, and mourn over the only other person they had both loved.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Piper asks through tears, her voice shaky and catching every few words. "How could you keep something like that to yourself?"

"Yeah well, you weren't there to tell." Alex shrugs calmly.

"Alex..." Piper freezes, stopping mid-sentence, her face a volcano erupting. She wipes her tears before quietly whispering "When?"

Alex doesn't look at her. Not because she chose to do so but because she physically _cannot._ "A couple of weeks after you'd left."

"And you didn't tell me?" Her face is suddenly flushed angry, glistening eyes blazing with hurt. "You couldn't call me, or text me? Or fuck…" Her voice collapses into fragmented syllables, "Any-anything, at all?"

"You wanted a clean break, Piper. That includes me telling you anything that happens in my life after you fucked off."

"It wasn't your life to keep to yourself!"

"Well I guess you know now."

Alex was finding it hard to keep her distance; watching Piper's grief shatter open in front of her was turning her skin inwards.

Six years Alex had cried and sobbed on her own, no-one to comfort her, no-one to hold her when the tentacles of grief had wrapped themselves around her. No-one to tell. The funeral had been the worst thing Alex had ever experienced. She remembers looking to her side, hoping that Piper had somehow figured out Diane had passed, had somehow scoured the obituaries, and magically turned up.

She hadn't of course.

She'd been forced to suffer through it alone. Which was why she stayed rooted to her spot, let Piper share even an inkling of the pain she had felt.

"Do you really think I didn't care?" Piper mumbles, more to herself than Alex. "Enough for you not to tell me your mom had passed?"

"I don't know what to think, Piper. All I remember is wanting to fucking call you, wanted to tell you so fucking bad…" Alex shuts her eyes, an impulse of wanting to walk out of the room arresting her speech so abruptly. She hadn't realised but her heart was hammering against her chest so hard, and her breathing had turned erratic, it felt like she was going to have a heart attack. At least she's in the right place if that ever happened. "And I thought I could do it on my own, give her the best funeral she could have, buy the best flowers, wear my best fucking dress, but do you know how fucking stupid that is?" Alex swallowed a stream acrid bile back down. "Because why would any of that even matter if she's dead?"

"Alex..."

"Don't."

Piper stays quiet, hugging herself like she's trying to take up even less space than she already did.

But then she starts shaking her head, her eyes glazed over and lost. "You should have told me. You should have told me. I can't believe...you should have-"

Alex screws her eyes shut, "Piper, stop. Just _stop_."

It abruptly stops.

There's a white noise silence.

Alex watches her stiffen up, a strained expression marring Piper's features. Alex's heart feels like it's being tugged out out of her chest, pulled out of its confines and thrown into the open.

"Alex, I still...I still-" Piper lifts her head as though she was having an epiphany but trails off, like she's having an internal argument with herself but Alex cuts her off before certain words she most dreaded were unleahsed out into the open.

"I don't care, Piper. You don't get to rehash any of that ever again."

"What was all that about then? Last night? You cared then?" She stumbles over her words, a forced hope covering them. "What was all that?"

For a moment, Alex wants to spill the truth. Let it douse all over them. Of how she had wanted to hug Piper so bad that her ribs felt like they were going to rip out. How she had wanted to wrap her hands around each and every part of her and just _hold_ her.

But she doesn't. "I checked you over." She answers coolly. "It was purely professional. Nothing more, nothing less."

"It seemed more than professional, Alex."

She pushes herself off the bench, "Jesus stop trying to make something from fucking nothing, Piper." Alex laughs suddenly, it's a dark laugh laced with condescension. "You were always so good at that."

"Jesus...you really are still an insufferable asshole." Piper snaps, wiping her eyes with her sleeves.

"Yeah well. It doesn't matter what you think. I used to care too much about what you thought. Not anymore."

"Just…fuck." Piper's voice thickened with unshed tears. Alex blankly watches her grab her bag, shut her locker and storm out of the room.

"Are you fucking serious?" Alex called after her. Her voice on the brink of something she doesn't want to acknowledge. It feels as though she's watching a replay of herself from six years ago, the past cruelly catching up with her. Nothing had changed really. It still brutally hurt like it did then.

.

.

.

Friday evening, Alex finally headed home. The drive took less than the usual time. A good thing under normal circumstances but now she could already feel a stone of unease slowly making its way down the pits of her stomach.

Alex hadn't had enough time to prepare. Hadn't properly shaken off the last remnants of Piper-related thoughts before she'd be able to walk through the front door.

She pulls into the driveway, and cuts the engine. She sits silently, staring out at the dead leaves fluttering in the cold autumnal air. A gust of wind shakes the car and it's the cold chill setting in that finally gets her out of her car and into the house.

She turns the lock in the door and she's right. She wasn't ready.

Al! Babes, you're home!"

Sarah's greeting is full jubilant warmth. She places a quick and familiar kiss on Alex's cheek and proceeds to grab her bag and helpfully slides her coat off. Alex steps into the lounge. The place smells of freshly brewed coffee and it appears though she's cleaned up as well judging from the gleaming floor and plumped out pillows.

It's nice.

She's nice.

Sarah, the friendly and helpful realtor whom Alex had met when she was viewing her would be house about a year back. Tallish, with high cheekbones and easy smile, Sarah had partially filled a void Alex had been carrying for too long. They'd gone on a couple of dates and had liked each other enough to keep on seeing each other.

Fast forward twelve months, and they were sharing a living space. Alex doesn't even remember the exact moment she had accepted someone into her home, allowed them to walk into her personal life. A series of nondescript yes's and here she was, living a pitifully ordinary life.

Sarah busies herself placing dishes on the table. "How was work?"

"Fine."

"Yeah?"

Alex lit a cigarette, and sat by the window, staring at mundane Manhattan life playing out beneath them. She turns her head, dimly recognising she's supposed to expand on the earlier question. She clears her throat. "It was mostly fine, just the usual inane stuff." Alex glanced up, forcing herself to make An Effort. "You?"

"Really good actually. Finally sold that house down in Brooklyn. Good price too." She answers. "You know how long I've been trying to sell that beast, and for it to have actually happened was a shock really."

"That's great." Alex hears herself mumble automatically in between puffs of smoke. She can feel a twinge behind her eyes, the beginnings of a headache looming. The cigarettes weren't helping.

She leans back against the window already wanting this conversation to end, a weary fatigue pulling her down.

Sarah nestles herself beside Alex, eyes bright with uncontainable excitement, "And guess…guess who got awarded shit load of commission and got nominated for realtor of the month?"

Alex forced herself to at least reflect _some_ of Sarah's glee but only managed to push her smile at half-mast. "Congratulations. That's really good."

Alex hadn't noticed until now, she _had_ but it hadn't bothered her that much up until now. There was something vaguely irritating about how too hard Sarah tried. The smiles too big, the patience infinite, the niceties too contrived.

"Hey you good?"

"Yeah course." Alex mumbles. She lights another, surprised she's already on her second cigarette.

Alex tunes herself at the television, absently watching Daniel Craig shoot yet another bad guy. It was Quantum of Solace; the shit one with all the bad ratings and flop at the box office.

It was still better than acknowledging Sarah's fingers running through her hair or the obvious want on Sarah's face.

Fuck, the arousal was off-putting to say the least. Alex feels a hand cover hers. "I've missed you, you know? All these long hours you're clocking every day." Sarah chuckles wistfully. "Barely get to see you."

Alex shrugs her off and climbs off the ledge, throwing the cigarette into the ashtray and dropping down on the sofa instead. "You knew my line of work before you signed up for this, S."

"No, I don't mean it like that." Sarah leant back, following Alex out and sitting beside her. She scanned Alex's face, searching and asks, "You sure you're fine?"

"I soon won't be if you keep asking." Alex throws back. She watches Sarah's face curl into hurtful surprise. It's gratifying for a split-second before she regrets the sharpness of her words and her general asshole-ishness for that matter. "Look I'm sorry, I'm just really tired that's all. Didn't mean to take it out on you." She gets to her feet, nearly knocking the remote control off the table, not quite sure where she's headed, before improvising, "I'm going to shower."

"Don't be long though, I made quiche and bought that Sauvignon you liked."

Alex doesn't glance back. "Sure."

* * *

Three hours later Alex hears the door softly open. She'd finished showering an hour ago, had slumped onto her bed with the towel still wrapped around her, and she'd been overcome with such a strange urge of just lying there. If Alex didn't move, nothing changed. No decisions made, no consequences created. The simplicity of that was almost poetic in its thinking.

She has to sit up now. The room momentarily spins, the darkness disorientating. Alex's throat feels dry and her head is pounding at full blast now. She hasn't eaten anything since this morning, her stomach reminding her just so.

It scared her sometimes. The hunger, the lethargy…it reminded her of symptoms of her past. Washing up at unexpected moments. She quickly shakes off the thought and braces herself for whatever was going to happen now.

"Hey." Sarah's voice softly floats in. She's stood by the door, hovering.

"Hey."

"You didn't come down for dinner."

"Wasn't really hungry."

Alex could eat an elephant right now. She doesn't even know why she's lying.

She feels Sarah hesitate, her words stalling. "I thought...-"

"What?"

"It's just…it's just you could have told me before you went upstairs…could have saved me the waiting."

"Yeah course, sorry."

Even Alex could hear she sounded everything but apologetic. She should say something. Something fucking cheery. Whatever the fuck couples say to each other when they conversed.

Alex suddenly laughs at how absurd her thinking was.

"What are you laughing at?"

"Nothing." Alex waves her hand, dismissively. "You wouldn't understand anyway."

For the first time, Sarah's voice has lost it's happy edge. Thready and barely audible. "Right...food's in the oven whenever you're ready."

She's once again alone. Alex falls back onto the bed, staring at the wall, shadows of the branches outside dancing across it. and contemplating the reason why she was _so_ determined to fuck things up.

She rolls over, burying her face into the pillow for a few seconds. Alex used to do that when she was younger, scream into pillows, emotional release from dumb teenage problems like why does Frankie from next door not like her. Now she was older, and screaming different sorts of problems into pillows.

Alex peers at the clock: it was pushing past midnight. There was no point going back downstairs. It's ten minutes after when she's rifling through her wardrobe, and the palm of her hand briefly brushes against the sleeve of her scrubs.

It was so stupid and pitiful in its thinking, but Alex can't help it. There's an almost animalistic need drilling into her skin; to reconnect, to relive. She strokes the scrub top. It's the same texture and fabric to the one Piper was wearing that night when Alex had checked her over. If she closed her eyes, she could almost recall the sensation of her hand on Piper.

She snatches her hand back, as though she'd been branded. Fuck, it wasn't supposed to be like this. She wasn't supposed to feel like this. Alex had closed that chapter of her life six years ago, had buried the book for good measure, yet here she was, digging with bare hands into dirty soil, trying so hard to retrieve something lost.

.

.

.

That same night Alex had dreamed of Piper. Real memories, real sensations, interspersed with _would be could be should be_ scenarios of them. It played like a twisted Tim Burton movie; a snippet where they're laughing simultaneously at a bad film, another where Piper's walking toward Alex but at the last minute laughs and climbs onto a train travelling in the opposite direction. There's no logical reasoning behind any of it.

At some point during the night Alex felt Sarah roll toward her, her body moulding against hers and arms slung over Alex's chest. She watches it rise and fall in time with her respirations.

If Alex imagined hard enough, willed her mind long enough, that arm belonged to somebody else. It was almost frightfully jolting of how not so hard she had to try.

.

.

.


	3. You're making me sick, love

3\. You're making me sick, love

* * *

.

.

.

That evening instead of driving straight home, Alex carries on along the highway, passing her usual exit. The city lights flickered in the distance behind her, becoming smaller and smaller - grassland and trees slowly replacing the concrete. The setting sun streamed through the car window, bathing her in an after orange glow. It was a tranquil view yet Alex's mind was clouded with grey.

Soon, she's driving through narrow streets, before eventually turning into a familiar road, the trees lining it, barren and wilted. Alex double parks the car and steps out, quickly pushing the collar of her coat up against the icy wind.

The place was exactly the same, hell even the burnt out metallic remains of of an old Buick still lay in ruins like it had six years ago.

Alex walks through a series of narrows paths, the paving slabs cracked and weathered from years of salty rain. Eventually she comes to a stop in front a small building with a corrugated roof, the paint peeled back, curling and broken. The padlock to the metal door rusted over

But the key she held still fit.

She swung the door open, entering a space she hadn't seen for nearly five years and it's like falling headfirst into time.

Alex had owned this storage unit for the last six years, and had frequented it all of three times despite spending a small fortune on its yearly rent. The seven by seven foot space held everything that had ever belonged to her mother.

For an awful second Alex thinks someone had broken into the space, but a quick inventory puts her mind at rest. Record albums stacked on the right, old 90s VCRs piled on the left, everything was still in its exact same place.

She feels her chest twists into itself when she spots a glimpse of a faded Jimi Hendrix vinyl. They used to listen this non-stop repeat during their mellow college summers, her and Piper. Stupid, goofy dances in too small dorm rooms, that were so hot and stuffy they'd be sweating by the time the chorus played. Alex can almost hear the lyrics to _All along the Watchtower_ bouncing off the sterile walls.

Suddenly she feels so fucking melancholic, hating and pitying herself in equal measures for even bringing this outdated bullshit back up.

But there's an invisible rope pulling her down into the depths of carefree nostalgia, an urge to relive a good time gone by. Alex falls to her knees and begins rifling through forgotten high school reports and old children's books she used to own, smoking cigarettes as she read her teachers remarks, smiling nostalgically every so often. Alex opens another box marked 'clothes' and she's met by her mom's old diner uniform. The fabric had frayed with time, the colour faded to a more pastel red. She automatically lifts it to her nose, trying to find a trace of her mom's old perfume, instead the material reeked of mothballs and mildew. She shoved it back inside, slamming the lid shut.

A thoughtless stream of if she just dropped down here, amongst the old, crappy furniture and smelly antique closets, would anybody ever find her? There's a part of her that can't access the real reason for her pensive sadness, some forbidden part of her brain she had stowed away. Alex hauls herself up eventually. God, when had her mind become such a fucking wasteland?

She knocks over a cardboard box in the process, more childhood paraphernalia tumbling out. Alex spots a digital camera amongst the stuff and fishes it out. It's old and dusty, a stark reminder of time passed.

To her relief the memory card is still in there.

Alex pockets it and heads home.

.

.

.

She doesn't look at its contents until Sarah had gone to bed. She'd beckoned Alex to join her but she made up some dumbass excuse of looking over some work-related stuff. Sarah had conceded soon after they exchanged awkward good-nights.

Alex boots her laptop up, absent-mindedly watching it start up. Three clicks later and she dove back into her past. _Their_ past.

Piper's face hadn't changed, neither had her smile. The same smile full of giddy energy, and light that never failed to stop Alex in her tracks no matter what she was doing.

Photo after photo after photo popped up onto her screen. Alex clicked through them all in an almost robotic fashion, each one opened, a deeper ache she felt. It was a fucked up therapy session, full of masochism and bleak yearning yet she made herself carry on.

Fuck, they'd taken so many pictures. Mostly random shots of them in mid-action, mouths open mid-sentence, a blurry half-smile caught there, a cut off face here. The candidness rolls over Alex in cold waves, drowning her in good times gone by.

It was mainly Piper's handiwork; there were snaps of Alex's old red pick-up, a half in frame shot of Piper bent over a textbook, another of them both this time, the angle too close to fully contain their faces in the shot. Snippets of their college days together, anyone who flicked through their pictures would see two young people happily in love, sharing their formative years together. It leaked out of their smiles, their stolen half-glances at each other, all frozen in time.

Alex is still clicking through when her hand abruptly stops: this one was a full length, crystal clear shot of Piper, taken on an award ceremony day at college. Alex had taken that in Piper's room. She'd been sat on the desk, and heedlessly captured the moment. Who knew the next time she'd see it would be in a dank old storage facility with the added irony of Piper not even existing in Alex's life anymore.

The memory slams against her, so visceral and startlingly vivid. Alex remembers waiting for Piper to appear from behind the dresser. She couldn't stop beaming because Piper was especially beautiful that evening. Her hair styled into loosely curled tendrils, a self-effacing smile capturing her face. She'd been wearing a small black dress, understated yet elegant. Her cheeks rouged and eyes bright. When Piper had looked up and smiled at Alex, it had felt like all of the world's fireworks had been ignited all at once inside her.

She's still staring at the photograph — nearly a decade removed, but it feels as though it was taken yesterday.

 _"How do I look?"_

 _"God, Pipes. You look so fucking beautiful."_

 _A bashful smile escapes from Piper and it makes Alex's heart swell. Coldplay's Yellow is softly playing in the background, the perfect song to slow dance to Alex thinks all of a sudden._

 _"You think so?"_

 _"I think so?" Alex leans back theatrically, purposefully roving her gaze all over Piper, drinking in her beauty. "I know so."_

 _Alex watches her cheeks pull into a smile, shy and delighted all at once. She feels her heart being catapulted into the very depths of her throat, overcome with an overwhelming affection all at once._

 _She climbs off the bed and beckons Piper toward her, who was still stood hovering by the dressing table, as though waiting for Alex's permission._

 _"C'mere, this song is my jam." She meets Piper halfway, and when they're close enough, takes her hand. Alex gently pulls her even closer. Their breaths intermingled, near enough_ _sharing the same space. "You know I'm a little jealous of all the assholes that are all going to think the same over just how hot you are right now."_

 _"But do they get to do this though?" Piper smiles coquettishly before placing her lips over Alex's and kisses her like there's no tomorrow. She kisses back with equal abandon, if not more._

 _They break apart eventually, foreheads resting, lazily moving to the hazy lyrics of the song, neither making much of an effort really._

 _Look at the stars_

 _Look how they shine for you_

 _And all the things that you do_

 _It's true_

 _They lapse into a comfortable silence, the rifts of the chorus filling the room._

 _"God, I'm terrified." Piper whispers into her neck, her head leaning into Alex's shoulder. "What if I forget the lines, Al? Or even if worse, I trip on stage or or...-"_

 _"Hey, hey." Alex fixes a stray strand of hair back in its place. "You're going to ace that speech, babe. Remember?" She chuckles. "Because I obviously know so."_

 _Piper tilts her head teasingly, "You know so, huh?"_

 _Alex fixes a chaste kiss against her cheek. "Totally know so."_

 _They carry on dancing, it was more languidly moving around the small confines of the room and semi-vaguely following the beat._

 _Alex leans forward and murmurs into her ear, "You're going to think of all the assholes that wanted to be where you're going to be standing and you'll sail through it just like that."_

 _"So I'll have to think of you as well, then?" Piper grins jokily, tilting her head forward, her hands absent-mindedly running through Alex's hair, Chris Martin's voice reaching a slow crescendo behind them._

 _"Of course." Alex habitually kisses her. "Anyway, go get 'em, tiger."_

 _"Okay." Piper pulls Alex closer, threading their fingers together. "But let's finish the song first."_

 _Alex kisses her again, deep and unhurried. "Admit it, 'cause it's not the song you want."_

 _"Such an ego, honestly."  
_

 _It's half hour or later and both are considerably more sated when they head off to the university auditorium, the buzz of the crowd already seeping through the half-closed doors. Evn the corridors leaning into the hall were alight with charged energy. The end of year celebration evening was a big deal to anyone worth their salt, even more to to Piper._

 _"I'll meet you later, yeah?"_

 _"Hmmm." But Piper's face is a battlefield of anxiety and excitement._

 _Alex turns back around and holds her by both shoulders, fixing her gaze willing positive energy into Piper's blues. "You're going to be fine."_

 _"I know. i know."_

 _"Good luck hug."_

 _Piper throws her a wry grin. "God, you're such a dork sometimes."_

 _Alex holds her hands out, "You want in or not?"_

 _Piper doesn't have to be told twice, walking the two steps into Alex's arms, her grip a little too tight and a little too lengthy. But Alex doesn't mind. At all._

 _..._

 _"…and I'd like to thank my mentors; both past and present for this wonderful award. Without them…I wouldn't, wouldn't have been here." Alex watches Piper falter on stage, her voice jolting. Piper's eyes scan over the audience, her discomfort obvious, the nervous energy pouring out from her when she realises the true magnitude of the crowd._

 _Their eyes lock, and Alex smiles reassuringly while flicking a thumbs up and mouths, "Think of the assholes."_

 _Piper grins back, momentarily forgetting she's on stage._

 _It's the little things Alex lives for._

The after-image is still burning into Alex's retina when the visual faded into the dark. She shuts her laptop, disorientated in that way when someone abruptly wakes you up from a lucid dream.

An unforgiving mental exhaustion suddenly sets deep into her bones.

Alex stares out of the window - the sky was dark with swirling grey clouds, ready to release their burgeoning selves from months' worth of rain.

She lights a cigarette, and leans back, gazing out into space, wilfully trying to shut off that cold-sweat feeling sticking to her skin.

Alex sat like that until the inky sky eventually made way for the orange rays of morning sun.

.

.

.

Piper had been working on autopilot. She could only recall a vague outline of what she'd done these past few days, only guided by the activities of the day to figure out where she was in the week. Bitterness and anger was what kept her going, had allowed her to finish the graveyard shift without breaking down.

But that had failed her at some point during the drive home, when anger frighteningly turned to a sudden instinctive need to tell Diane about her new-found grief. Ask her how to do it properly, ask her whether it was normal to wake in the middle of night and cry for no other reason than to _cry._ Was any of that remotely normal? Piper needed to know.

But it's when a frightening thought courses through Piper - was she even allowed to mourn Diane's death? Was there such as thing as belated grief? As though a twisted statute of limitations-like rule existed that that would bar her from doing so.

Piper thinks suddenly back to the summer between their third and fourth year of college, how Diane had been so effortlessly supportive when Piper's parents had kicked her out after they'd found out she liked girls and hadn't wanted to apply to Brigham like her father had wanted.

Diane had taken Piper into her refuge, treated her like her own daughter, a concept that Piper couldn't really refer to. Diane had never viewed her as just Alex's girlfriend. Had never questioned any of Piper's worried thoughts. It's horrible, replaying happy memories, now retrospectively tainted with death.

Tears spring from her eyes, a renewed anger bubbling back up, reminded yet again that Alex had kept the death to herself for so long, out of spite, out of resentment, out of whatever the fuck. Piper clings onto the steering wheel, a more dawning thought pushing into her.

The thought that Alex had dealt with it all on her own. It's even more so fucked up when Piper blankly realises Alex couldn't even bring herself to let her know. _Even_ when she'd been rock bottom. God, she must have hated Piper for it.

Strangled images of Alex crying on her own with no one to hold her, nearly makes Piper keel forward. Unyielding guilt forces her gaze out of the window where it lands on the grey outline of Manhattan. Disgusted with herself, she sits up straight and roughly wipes the self-pitying tears, aware that Alex must have felt at least million times worse.

Stricken, Piper only just notices her car had been straying toward the central reservation, unnerved she quickly straightens the wheel but slows down too abruptly. Car horns sound behind her, the flashes of irate drivers lighting up the insides of her car, but the image of Alex grieving on her own is the only thing her mind registers.

She parks the car in the lot. It's only when her phone rings that she realises she's been sat inside it for at least fifteen minutes. She glances at the screen; it's her mom. Without further thought, she silences it and unbuckles her seatbelt.

It was freezing outside, the temperatures dipping into the subzero numbers. A snow storm had been forecasted for the coming week. Piper already dreaded the new cohort of patients the cold snap would bring to the ER doors: the elderly and infirm, the accident prone, and all the various snow related accidents humans could cause. A cold air blew in from the open car window that knifed straight through Piper. The coldness felt as though it was seeping into her bones despite the thick jacket she was wearing.

Piper reached over to close the window, her hand freezes mid air when her eyes fall on a figure climbing out of a car parked near the entrance.

Her hand shoots down almost immediately.

Alex is leaning against her car, a dark coloured sedan with silver finishes. For a moment Piper thinks she's imagining, her brain slowly catching up with reality.

Despite her initial shock, Piper finds herself inadvertently smiling, it's a massive upgrade from the battered old SUV Alex used to drive them in. She remembers their long, aimless drives on the weekends, cooling themselves down with ice-lollies that had already half-melted under the scorching sun, the summer breeze sneaking in through the vents, tickling their hair. Humid summer nights, all warm and hazy, the twinkling stars making them feel free and uninhibited. Their messy makeouts across car consoles and narrow seats whenever they stopped to fill up with gas, the rest of the world seemingly forgotten.

Piper's smile loses its weight when she realises how much of Alex's life she doesn't know about now. The smile deflates completely when she thinks about how much she's missed out on. She never lets herself think on either thoughts long enough.

Her stomach starts to balk. Piper almost wishes for her mind to be wiped clean, erase Alex's existence from her thoughts. It would be much less painful, she's sure of it.

She watches Alex engage the car alarm, and walk away; her steps careful yet confident. She's slinging a bag over her shoulder, still wearing her civilian clothes; a loose-fitting sweatshirt underneath a heavy-duty dark green parka paired with faded blue jeans.

Piper can feel her heart turn inside and out all of a sudden, a stab of irrational jealousy jolting her upright.

Alex is talking on her cell - happiness and laughter radiating from her.

Her heart lurches. They used to do that to each other. Make each other laugh. Bring out the best in each other. Piper wondered who was on the other side of the line, who was that person, fucking privileged enough to make the former love of her life laugh like that?

Because six years ago all Piper could get from Alex was cries and anger.

As though she could sense her, Alex suddenly turns, her head tilting in the direction of Piper's car, looking straight at her. Eyes narrowed into two slits, their green visible even through the gloom of the parking lot.

Blind alarm rocks through Piper. She flattens herself against the car-seat, yet she's not able to look away. She tells herself there is no way in hell Alex could see her, the darkly tinted windows of her car made sure of that.

Piper can't drag her eyes away. She's not sure what to do but Alex had already resumed her conversation, swiping her ID badge with her free hand, and disappeared through the double doors.

.

.

.

Piper's too preoccupied for work, her head not really in the swing of things the entire day. There's an automaticity to her actions, dealing with the usual crowd of Friday drunks, a vague awareness of people streaming around her as she cannulated, resuscitated and told relatives their loved ones hadn't made it. She barely even registers their grief, detached from the sounds as though her head was submerged underwater.

She continues like that for most of her shift. Head underwater, head resurfacing briefly before going back under again. It's nice down there.

There was a point during the evening when the water had dried up and she'd been stranded onto cold sand, marooned onto an island made up of sudden unbearable chaos.

There was a code in progress, Nurse Red was shouting in her ears, "C'mon, Chapman! Third adrenaline in, what's next?"

"The pressure's gone, the pressure's gone!" A disembodied voice adds to the cacophony. "I think we'll need the anaesthetist down here, asap!"

"Get a fourth one in, and get Dr Yeovil to sort this mess out." Piper had flatly instructed, relieved when the reigns had been taken over by the crash team that had shortly arrived after.

The normally manageable bedlam of ringing phones, people shouting, beeps and alarms shrieking tunelessly all of a sudden became unbearable. The place had been a barely contained zoo of injured humans, discarded medical paraphernalia, and near-burnt out staff.

It didn't exactly work in her favour when Piper hadn't slept much last night. She'd gone to bed too early, tossing and turning, almost begging for sleep to come, because that would stop the images of Alex and her anguish branding itself into her retinas. It hadn't and she didn't.

She'd been having a recurring dream, no, _nightmare_. Alex would hold an expression Piper had only imagined in books, of a loss and a desperation so profound that they had hashed together to create some new, raw emotion no one had yet experienced. And she would be holding her hands out, begging for more of the stuff, _crying_ for more. Like some fucked up holy prayer. Only here Piper wasn't a god.

It would have been much less painful if it hadn't been a real encounter. Piper must have eventually fallen asleep after a few hours but must have woken up more than a dozen times. Not for that long each time, but enough to break her sleep into a series of restless chunks.

"Dr Chapman, there's a new case waiting in six."

Piper twists around, she wipes her forehead, vaguely registering a cold sweat trickling down. She must look like hell right now, which is just as well, she was in hell anyway. She's met by an intern nervously clutching a notebook and pen, eyes darting everywhere but at her. Piper didn't know her but hazarded a guessed she's probably an intern, judging from the enthusiastic eagerness not yet destroyed by what was yet to come.

"What is it?" She asks, without turning around. She still had another eleven cases to review and it was nearly nine in the evening. She was going to home on time tonight, so help her god.

"Details?"

Piper's been led on enough wild goose chases in the past by idiotic interns who couldn't figure out the difference between a surgical and medical case. No self-respecting medical attending would touch a surgical case with even a ten foot barge pole.

"Sorry." The intern starts flicking through the notes, "Uh…thirty-six year old female, two day history of abdominal pain and-"

"Refer to surgeons." Piper interjects, she's already moving to the next patient when she hears the intern protesting behind her.

"Dr Chapman, I'm sorry, but don't you want to hear the rest?"

Piper holds in a tired sigh, and locks eyes with the mousy intern, "What's your name?"

"Kate Jacobs."

"Kate Jacobs, you see this is a surgical problem and I'm sure that from the six years worth of medical teaching you've had you must still remember that an acute abdomen is _not_ a medical problem."

"But-"

Piper clenches her eyes shut. Today is not the day where she's able to locate her patience instead stupid, fucking unbearable images of Alex and her oh so soft hands bulldoze through her thoughts and it's making her angry all of a sudden so she snaps, "Refer to surgeons, and don't come back until you've done so."

* * *

There's a knock on the door into her office; meek and it's already raising Piper's hackles.

Kate, the intern's head pops in, her face already betraying her failure.

"Dr Chapman-"

Piper lets out a groan, drawing in a breath that was weighed down with frustration, "Jesus, can nobody get one thing right in this place?"

The intern's gaze dropped like a stone to the floor. "I-"

It's more spiteful than she would have liked but she hisses it anyway, "That was a rhetorical question."

"The surgical attending wants to speak to you about that referral."

"Why?" Piper's rubbing her temples. No amount of painkillers would get rid of this godforsaken headache that had been following her around, crescendoing at all the wrong moments. Now being one of them.

Kate continues, her eyes willing Piper to understand she's just the messenger, "They don't think it's an appropriate referral."

She absorbs this dismaying news with obvious irritation.

There's a good reason Piper had actively avoided the den that was surgery, she wouldn't venture into that department even if she was paid to do so. More so the fact she would never be able to sit in a room full of them for fear of becoming blinded by the stench of arrogance and superiority.

Piper dismisses Kate with a volley of her hand, "Transfer the call to my desk and finish off that case in three."

She leans back in her chair, readying herself for a battle. It's a battle here everyday. There are days where a worrying thought snakes through her - she didn't have the stamina she had when she was a fresh faced intern.

The phone rings, she snatches it off the hook and hisses into the mouthpiece, "Either you accept that patient or I'm taking this to the highest level, so help me god-"

"Piper?"

Startled, Piper nearly drops the phone, as though her hand was suddenly unable to bear its weight. She keeps it away from her for a moment, closing her eyes and takes deep, panicked breaths, before slowly placing it back over her ear.

A ream of questions jockey their way to the tip of her tongue, but there's something blocking them, unable to say anything out loud.

It hits her all at once. The stress from today, the desolate grief eating her up from the inside. Her face flushes with heat, so relieved Alex can't see her. With immense effort she clears her throat and asks, "You wanted to discuss that patient?"

There's a long delay, and it has Piper almost thinking Alex had hung up on her but a static crackle tells her otherwise. "You should have told me, you know."

It comes out wispy and determined all at once. The concern thick and obvious. "I had to hear it from one of your interns to find out those bruises were as a result of you being _attacked._ "

"There was nothing to tell." Piper mutters back, almost inclined to point out the parallels, but she doesn't. She does make a mental note to discipline her interns not to run off with their fucking mouths, least of all to people like Alex.

"Your face said otherwise, Piper." A deep, worn-out sigh, "I don't know why that hadn't even occurred to me."

Piper can almost imagine Alex shaking her head into the phone, her heart sinking when she realises how well she knows Alex. It's dangerous and reassuring all at once.

Piper forces the next words out, "Sorry I don't give you a minute by minute commentary of my life, Alex."

Piper wishes she could take that back. She also wishes she could have said that with more conviction than the barely there whisperings. It's only after a few minutes when she hears, "Are you okay, though?"

"I'm fine." Piper answers eventually realising that Alex wasn't referring to her assault but rather how she was dealing with the news of Diane's death. But she wasn't fine. In fact she was doing truly fucking horribly. She bites back tears, clutching her bottom lip with her teeth, harshly hit with another fresh avalanche of mind-numbing pain.

Another question Piper had was how long did it take for that specific feeling to just go away.

She forces out, "I'm coping, I guess."

There's too much softness in her inflection than Piper would have liked but it's already out there in the open. A neon sign in the midst of darkness with the words _I still care_ flickering furiously across it.

"Well I'm glad." A long pause, "I was worried."

It catches Piper by surprise, the startlingly honest statement that spoke of _so so_ much more. Her heart sinks and rises all at once.

They held too much familiarity, too much of Alex and her relentless need to make sure Piper was okay. She'd always been like that, even during their stupid fights in the past where neither would talk for days. But it's always Alex who'd end the silence, always her who couldn't keep it up for long enough.

"Look I gotta go." Alex murmurs awkwardly. "I'll take that case."

Piper swallows everything back down, "Thanks."

But Alex had already hung up.

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 _AN / motivation to write kinda waned a bit these last few weeks. But wanted to get something out there. I must readily admit, not my greatest of chapters, but hope it wasn't too bad._


	4. Let's spend the future talking about th

4\. Let's spend the future talking about the past

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AN/ Genuine thanks for the feedback, you guys. Much appreciated.

(flashbacks in italics)

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The remarkable thing about medicine is that no matter how much effort you put in, you'll always be one step behind. That's the sentiment Alex carries when she picks up yet another case file. There's a stack of manila folders populating most of her desk, the jarring reminder she still had at least another twenty or so cases to review. She should have done this during her admin day a couple of days back but hadn't been able to get round to it when she'd been drafted to a trauma call from one of the operating rooms during the very first hour. So instead she's now here in her living room, about to pull her hair out, and wasting a precious Sunday at that.

Alex shuts her eyes for a second, but for no more than a second though. Any longer than that and she'd run the risk of falling asleep which would be an absolute disaster considering she had a full list tomorrow meaning this was her only real opportunity. She brings the cup of coffee she'd been nursing to her mouth but when she tips it over dumbly realises it's empty, the remaining dredges of coffee paste violating her tongue.

Just for something to do that isn't pouring over mortality graphs and scouring through endless amount of patient data, she gets up and makes herself a quick meal foraged from some leftover ingredients in the fridge. She returns back to her desk, heart sinking at the never-shrinking pile of notes. Alex can already feel the motivation flitting away.

She's quietly spooning whatever skeleton meal she'd whisked together and gazes out of the window; swirling dark clouds and a long ago receding sun was what greeted her. There had been a time when she'd be looking out to azure seas and tropical beaches. Floor to ceiling windows, holiday apartments with small verandahs, the kind with rustic wooden patios and small quaint chairs. She could almost feel the humid coastal breeze tickling her hair, her skin sun-kissed from hour long beach walks and intermittent use of sun lotion. Predictably, Alex's memory journey flags at the one where Piper had tried to catch the sun in her hands in search for that perfect, semi-pretentious holiday snap.

One hand buried in her hair, Alex pushes her laptop back open, the brightness of the screen glaring into her retinas. It's thoughtless and without precedence but she finds the mouse hovering over that file again.

She needs to solidify that earlier memory, reaffirm the fact that it wasn't some extension of her imagination.

Click.

It was a good picture, ticking all the qualities to turn into one of those would-be photographs teeming with sentimentality and destined for a spot in the family album.

It was another of Alex's shots; Piper caught in front of a setting Venetian sun, her face tanned and bright all at once. The colours so richly saturated, even the weathered gondolas appeared photo ready. That typical tourist pose of trying to circle the sun frozen in time. A small smile escapes, Piper had been way off, the imperfectness all the more endearing.

"Hey babe?" It returns Alex to her desk the food in front of her had long gone cold. "Who's that you're looking at?"

Alex hadn't even realised or heard Sarah coming down, apparently in search for a glass of water and had been stood behind her for an unknown length of time. Alex listlessly turns around - met by Sarah's scrupulous stare, her features dangling toward accusation.

Unthinking, she closes the file, something which makes Sarah narrow her eyes even further. In isolation, it's innocuous. She could easily brush it off as flicking through her university photos, which is somewhat true. But there's too much proof stacking against her.

Before Sarah runs to her own conclusions, Alex speaks, "It's nothing."

"It looks more than _nothing,_ Alex."

"Just someone from work, nothing else." God did she have to sound so fucking cliched, fuck.

"That doesn't answer the question."

"Look." Alex grabs her hand, an action she has to consciously initiate. "Whatever it is that you're thinking...get rid of it. You have nothing to worry about."

"You sure?" Sarah thumbs her fingers over Alex's hand.

"Totally."

So easily appeased. So effortlessly accepted. It makes Alex irrationally angry. That was Sarah, the easily pleased realtor from Ohio whom she met in a generic bar after buying her an equally generic drink. The simplicity of it is laughably banal.

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Alex and Piper had met at one of the bars that was just off the college campus, situated along the more chic side of town. One of those hideaway places with retro decor that served drinks in fancy glasses and were on first name basis with their customers. Alex and Piper had never crossed paths even though they read for the same degree so it was almost inevitable they'd reach a confluence at some point.

On paper their match was uneven, incompatible rather. Where Piper was a shy straight A scoring girl hailing from sleepy Northampton - Alex was the confident, too smart for her own good college senior who had a penchant for avant-garde literature and hung with people much too old for her. Alex's free-reigning charm and worldly presence at complete odds with Piper's inherent need to follow rules and walk within the lines.

But there had been an almost scientific rigour of how they came together — a tease here, cheesy joke there, a few drinks in between and bodies connecting.

 _Piper manages to battle her way to the bar, barely squeezing between two people waiting to be served. She's only mildly tipsy even though the clock had long struck midnight, her friends however were already too drunk to hold a normal conversation, evidenced when Polly earlier asked why there's a severe lack of hot boys in their immediate vicinity._

 _She flicks her phone out, habitually clicking on the anatomy app and muttering the muscles of the arm under her breath. They're two weeks away from the semester exam and trying to memorise the god-forsaken anatomy of the upper limbs was proving to be a slow and arduous process._

 _Exam anxiety had erased all boundaries of where revision could take place, bars apparently one of them. Finally the bar man slid her drink across the counter, already hearing that running mantra approaching: I'm going to fail, and that's that._

 _It's not like she ever failed an exam for the thought to be justified, rather she always bagged herself higher than average but the dread never showed any signs of abating._

 _She's about to walk back when the person beside her turns around, "Studying anatomy in a bar of all places?"_

 _Piper jerks her phone back into her pocket, all red-faced, acting like she'd been caught driving through a red light. Her eyes flick up to meet the person brazen enough to interrupt her revision and even more brazen to question her over it._

 _She's around Piper's age, cigarette in hand and flicking ash, the emanating smoke forming curls in the gloom of the low lighting. Piper spots the university bracelet wrapped around her wrist and figures she must be a college student. But it's the woman's choice of clothes wear that would conclude otherwise. A casual half-buttoned shirt, a tank top underneath and frayed jeans that Piper's pretty sure aren't sold in any mainstream stores she knows of. This woman didn't seem like the kind of person who'd waste her time trawling through JC Penny stores but instead appeared much better suited to work behind the counter of a super hip bar while some dark emo band played in the background._

 _It's a lot of assumptions but the over-thinking helped in bowling over the sudden hike in her heart rate when the woman flicked her cigarette into the ash-tray and leant forward, before whispering, "Try using a mnemonic to remember them all by. It works fucking wonders, believe me."_

 _"Sorry?"_

 _Piper watches her nod her head, expression beaming with cocky confidence while a wry smile tugged at her cheeks._ _"Mnemonics…y'know to memorise the muscles or whatever the fuck else we're forced to remember by our medical overlords these days?"_

 _She doesn't wait for Piper to catch on but instead turns back to the bar, signalling at the barman to refill their drinks. Piper's eyes momentarily drop to her low cut top, catching a glimpse of bare skin and a hint of cleavage. Guilty by her own thoughts she quickly flicks her eyes back toward safer grounds. She twirls her fingers together and awkwardly clears her throat. "Ummm...do I know you?"_

 _The woman turns her attention back to Piper, eyes low and enigmatic behind her glasses. It strikes Piper sudden like a storm that changes the landscape — she'd be seeing more of those eyes, in more ways than one._

 _She roves a hand through her hair, hypnotising Piper. "I don't think we've met."_

 _"I hadn't realised you're a med student too."_

 _The woman's staring at Piper, full undivided attention, head to the side. "Interested in getting laid tonight?"_

 _"What!" Piper backs off. "No, sorry." She's fumbling for a somewhat polite response, difficult in the face of such inappropriate questions. "I mean…you are hot and attractive and you have nice eyes, but…but I'm not interested." Shit, that sounds harsh, so she adds, "Not interested at this moment in time, which in no way means you're not interesting…-"_

 _Piper cuts herself off, mentally lambasting herself for the stream of nonsense spewing from her mouth. She takes a deep breath, summoning enough courage to meet the woman's gaze. There's an amused smile waiting to burst out, "You've gotta take a deep breath."_

 _"Sorry."_

 _The woman starts unbuttoning her shirt, right here in the middle of the bar but before Piper starts protesting the woman points at her bare arm and starts reeling off the muscles, "Relax, it's a mnemonic, **Interested** is the inferior supinator, **in** \- the iliohypogastric muscle, **getting,**_ _the_ glenohyoid _muscle." She looks up. "You get the principle."_

 _Piper can't tear her eyes away, "Oh."_

 _"The dirtier the mnemonic, the better…helps with the old memory." She pushes her glasses into her hair and without any further preamble, holds her hand out like they hadn't just spend the strangest ten minutes together, "I'm Alex."_

 _Piper takes her hand, "Piper. Piper Chapman."_

 _"Wanna play doctor, Piper Chapman?"_

 _Piper laughs out loud, it's beyond cheesy but it's the delivery of it, the piercing eyes roving all over as she said it. She finds herself gravitating toward this Alex with the darkly applied eye make-up and easy smile and bold attitude and it already feels as though she'd known her for years._

 _"Where was that from? Let me guess, jokes-dot-com or something?"_

 _Alex takes a sip of her drink, peering at Piper over the glass, eyes twinkling with mirth. " Jokes4us-dot-com actually. But it's made you laugh so a hearty win for me."_

 _"Is that what you do, Alex? Come up to strangers in bars and entice them with your hackneyed jokes?"_

 _Alex chuckles, which sends flutters of static running down Piper's spine. She already feels herself becoming ensnared under that green hued gaze. Alex pushes her glasses back down, her voice low and for the first time, with a tinge of seriousness, "Only to pretty women named Piper Chapman."_

 _God, what a fucking charmer._

 _Piper's too starry-eyed to speak, instead she feels a heat courses through her body where it travels upwards and sears into her cheeks. She can't help but smile when she eventually answers, all coy and giddy, "Well Alex, I guess I'm in luck then."_

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* * *

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It was Saturday.

Winter was already in full swing; the few planted trees barren, their branches struggling under the newly fallen snow. The sidewalks and roads had already gone from pristine white to grey sludge, the sky an equal off grey colour.

The sun was already setting, its rays reflected upon the lake glinting in the distance. Alex squinted her eyes out of the lounge window, mildly impressed to see that it had frozen over.

It's out of the blue but it reminds her of hot chocolate and ice-skating. Living in New York for most of her life had made ice-skating across barely frozen over rivers an almost ritual winter thing, borrowing frayed skates and spending her weekly pocket money on hot chocolate served in polystyrene cups had been the highlight during the icy season.

Alex suddenly turns away, snatching her eyes away from the memories, and shuts the blinds. She's too old for that sentimental shit now. Give her a stiff vodka and a decent cigarette and she was all set for the winter.

"What are you thinking about?"

Sarah comes up behind her, swinging her arms over Alex's neck and resting her head against her shoulder.

Alex shrugs, "Ice-skating and vodka."

"Sounds dangerous." Sarah absent-mindedly brushed a stray strand of Alex's hair back. "Y'know metal blades and alcohol sounds like a recipe for disaster."

"Not really." Alex turns around, meeting Sarah, all fond-eyed despite herself. "Alcohol and blades are the best possible combination. Alcohol wipes and surgical blades, it's our bread and butter."

"Well you've got a point, I suppose." Sarah chuckles amusedly. "Meanwhile our bread and butter involves trying to sell crappy houses at extortionate prices to some poor old soul. Honestly, I feel like the devil incarnate sometimes."

"Is that what you tried to do with me?" Alex asks, mildly amused.

Sarah laughs too readily. "I think it was you that was doing all the charming, I was too starry-eyed to do anything but watch and listen. God, you were such a flirt, honestly."

Alex smiles. But it pinches at the edges like clothing that doesn't quite fit.

They sit in silence for a while, when Sarah asks, her voice all hopeful and a touch pleading. "Any particular fancy in going anywhere today?"

It's almost automatic, "No, not really."

"There's that new place that opened a while back, we've been meaning to go for literally months."

"That Italian place, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"Next week, maybe." Alex can't help notice the poorly disguised disappointment before she adds. "We'll definitely go next week. I've just been feeling off, lately."

Alex wasn't lying, her headache still hadn't gone away, and there's a heavy feeling in her stomach that wouldn't disappear. It didn't help when her diet for the last few days had consisted of nothing but cigarettes and junk.

"We can always go another time, not to worry." It sounded more like a question than it did a statement.

Sarah gets up and returns a couple of minutes later. "Here this will do you good." She hands her a glass of wine and with her free hand smooths out the collar of Alex's shirt.

Alex takes a sip and splutters, "Woah, isn't this the _'92_ you were supposed to gift to your dad on his birthday?"

"Hmmm." Sarah leaned over, placing delicate kisses over her neck, apparently not as bothered by this fact as she was, "It's good isn't it, babe?"

Alex doesn't like where this is going; the hushed lover inflections already sending a wave of cold repulsion down her spine. She puts the glass back down.

"God, Alex. Sometimes for a doctor, you can be really fucking stupid." Sarah slides her hands under Alex's shirt, her fingers skimming the fabric of her bra. Alex lifts her gaze to her, the want in her eyes obvious and open. "I mean look at what I'm wearing."

Alex glances down, noticing for the first time, the flimsy negligee tight around her lithe body, the swell of her breasts visible just underneath the silk robes she was wearing. Alex doesn't want to but the thought was left hanging when Sarah gently places her lips over hers, the kiss soft and affectionate. In spite of herself, Alex feels herself responding, quickly turning the kiss hot and frantic, like she'd been without air for so long.

Her shirt becomes unbuttoned, hands palming her breasts, a buzzing sensation shooting through her when Sarah rubs her nipples. Alex lets out an involuntary groan when a knee is pushed between her legs, hands following shortly thereafter. Alex pushes Sarah back, their mouths still attached, and flicks open her robe, running her fingers over the satin material, before delving underneath her panties and plunging her hands into wet moistness. God, she was so fucking ready for her.

"Oh shit, Alex." Sarah moans into her ear, their kisses more frenzied as they prised each other's mouth open for more.

But there's a vague discomfort to it all. A horrible disembodied sensation where Alex felt like she was watching two unfamiliar people from above. A bird's eye view to some sordid affair. Except it wasn't. She was in a legitimate relationship with a nice realtor who cooked her food and made sure she saw the dentist once every six months.

And that was the core of the problem, it's nice, it's good, it's _satisfactory._ Alex can't recall a day where she'd felt anything beyond just fine. It's hard when every action of Sarah's was unconsciously measured up against Piper. Piper wouldn't have done that. Piper wouldn't have said that. It's frustrating when the standards have been set to immeasurably high. It's selfish to to blame Sarah for this, it's even more fucking horrible to blame an innocent bystander.

Sarah had always been set to fail _right_ from the starting line. Her movements felt mechanical, scripted almost. To an extent, they were scripted, their routine had been moulded from familiarity and predictability.

A bolting thought of Piper seeing her like this knifes through Alex, almost knocking her sideways. It causes the desire and want, plentiful moments ago to be stripped off almost instantly. It leaves her reeling, all unbalanced and cold.

"Hey, what's up?" Sarah leans back, her breathing still ragged.

Alex watches her mouth move, but isn't really registering anything. She suddenly feels so spaced out, her movements languid and woolly.

"I need to stop." Alex flatly declares, not meeting her eyes.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

Sarah leans forward smiling, like Alex was just teasing her and in actual fact wanted more. Sarah kisses her along her jawline, warm breath coasting over her neck.

"I said stop!"

"Jesus Christ, Alex!" Sarah jerks back in surprise. "What the hell's the matter?"

"Nothing's the matter."

"So why won't you let me kiss you?"

"I just don't feel like kissing." Alex answers, uncomfortably aware of how infantile that sounded.

Sarah climbs off her, "What's going on?" She pulls back, putting her clothes back on and lips twisted into a grimace.

Alex can feel her head pounding, she's walking on a tightrope and she can already foresee the exact spot where she'd lose her balance and fall off, yet she keeps walking. "Nothing's going on."

"So the cold shoulder act you've had going for the last couple of weeks, hell more like the past month, is just me imagining it all?"

Alex forces her voice to remain steady, "Look, I'm just tired. You're reading into things too much."

"Tired all the time, Alex?" Sarah tilts her chin, all accusatory and judgmental. "Because that's the only thing I keep hearing."

"You're being melodramatic."

Alex watches Sarah's shoulders hunch, her expression sinking into a cold realisation, "Am I not good enough for you anymore? Is that it?"

"No," Alex scoffs unconvincingly.

"Then what? What is it?"

"Nothing. _Nothing's_ it." Alex snaps, "Jesus Christ, since when have you become so needy?"

Sarah looks as though she'd been slapped, "Needy?"

"Is that what this is all about." Alex jerks back, "The clothes, the wine…you trying to seduce me?"

"Seduce you?" Sarah's face screws into fury for the first time. She springs to her feet, body ramrod. "That's what _normal, healthy_ couples do, Alex. Seduce, love, care for each other. Something you don't seem to have grasped at all."

Alex flinches, breathing hard. Words like love and care aren't synonymous with Sarah, aren't even closely associated with her. So why the fuck was she here? Why the fuck was she being such a selfish horrible human and had led Sarah the nice realtor into her life and handed her all of these expectations?

Alex stands up, conciliatory "Look-"

But she's cut off, "I've been racing my brains to see where the fault is, blaming myself for being too clingy maybe, too distant or too fucking anything." Sarah suddenly twists around, eyes filled with unwanted anger and piercing straight into Alex. There's a minute long hesitation, her shoulders slumping, before she softly asks, "You're cheating on me aren't you?"

The question slices the room in half.

"You're being stupid." Alex answers dismissively. She doesn't let herself examine the reason why it sounds so much like she's lying.

"Am I?" She's willing Alex to look at her, so she does. A year long relationship and she's never really seen Sarah in the state she was in now; her face almost looked as though she was pleading. _Please tell me I'm wrong._ But Alex doesn't. The words lodged somewhere in the back of her throat, like some stubborn fishbone she couldn't quite cough out.

"Yes you are, you're being stupid." It's half-hearted and lacks that convincing gusto but it's all Alex can give.

She breathes out, conflicted. The real crux of it was Alex _wants_ it too much to deny it. As though telling the truth would invalidate that faint sliver of _possibility_. Maybe she hadn't cheated in the technical sense of the word but she really wasn't that far off.

"So who was the text from then?"

"What text?"

"It's not from the same person I caught you practically _worshipping_ on your laptop is it?"

It's not asked unkindly, rather Sarah's voice was hopeless and full of weariness.

Piper's text falls back into her consciousness again, her mind's eye reading the words. She'd received it after the evening she'd checked Piper over. Nothing but shocked surprise had come over Alex when she'd seen the name appear across the screen, even more surprised when she realised Piper had never deleted her name from her phone contacts.

Too many conclusions, too many hopeful thoughts, and most of all the text had been too little, yet Alex could make herself see beyond the 'thanks for last night' if she halted her logic and allowed the longing to take hold.

It was strange how people drifted apart, like a ship leaving the coastline voyaging from bigger and better things. That was them, Piper was the ship though, she'd done all the leaving. Alex had been the anchor left behind.

"Alex!" A shove of the shoulder jerks her back to reality. "Is it her?"

Alex suddenly lets out an unbalanced laugh, void of humour. She keeps on laughing until she can hear her breath dangerously hitch into crying territories. She's got it so fucking wrong, all of it. "Fuck S, I never took you for someone who snoops through people's phones."  
The spiteful remark does it's job. Sarah turns away, looks back at Alex, her throat working erratically before straightening her expression into a serious frown. "I don't know what's happening to you, Alex. But whatever it is that's going on, I hope you make sense of it."

* * *

 _I don't know what's happening, Alex. I can't make sense of it." Piper mutters into the dark room of her dorm._

 _They're facing each other, stances similar to those old cowboy Westerns Alex's mom used to watch, but instead of the twitching hands ready to grab the guns in their holsters, it's Alex's hands that are twitching._

 _Alex would have pointed out the comical parallels had she been able to think straight or even better if the fucking room just stopped spinning for just a second._

 _"Nothing's happening, Piper." Alex drawls out, her voice sounding completely foreign. "And everything does make sense… to me." Her vowels and consonants are barely comprehensible even to her own ears. But all Piper does it just stand there, like she always does. Her heart's hammering in her chest, pleading for more, it's there she can see it, can practically smell it. The only problem was it was in Piper's hands, safely clutched away in her fist._

 _"It doesn't to me." Piper looks away. 'It never has."_

 _"I didn't ask you to understand anything. So spare the melodramatic soliloquy for someone else, Piper."_

 _Fuck. It wasn't as though she was part of a goddamn drug cartel. It was largely personal use bar the very few occasions she had sold to a few impressionable freshmen when Alex had ran out of money or drugs or both. They're had been times though where she'd been too catatonic to attend lectures and had to lock herself in her room until lucidity returned. Other times, money would be scarce which meant foregoing the stuff for weeks or even months at a time._

 _That's when the shakes started, the burning need for just as sniff of it, a lick, or even just the sight of it, too consuming. The self-hatred would never be too far behind though. It was always their lurking and waiting to pounce when she was at her lowest. The high the other side of the same coin. Needle there, Bullseye and in it goes. Push through and fall back onto that false bed of clouds._

 _The hit, the high, the slam. Call it whatever._

 _It was about relinquishing control. The one constant in her life. She could command it, grab it by the horns. It made her feel substantial, worthwhile even._

 _But by the next day Alex would be lost in a whirlpool of withdrawal. Guilt and self-condemnation as always swimming right beside her._

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 _AN / Please let me know of your thoughts everyone! This chapter was much more of a filler and sets the scenes for the next, so if it was not as dialogue rich as the previous, apologies. Next chapter most definitely next week if all goes to plan._


	5. I want her but we're not yet right

5\. I want her but we're not yet right

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 _AN/_ _okay guys, I've sat on this update for much too long and although this chapter was much longer it was largely unfinished. So I made the executive decision to re-write 0parts of it and at least post something, albeit a shorter update. My new work rota is much more forgiving with regards to free time so I foresee being able to get more writing time in. Anyway, ramble over. Enjoy._

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The scream of the first ambulance marked the start of Piper's shift. It's an almost obnoxious sort of waking up alarm that turned a gloomy and languid Monday morning into a high octane action movie in a matter of seconds. Instead of the guns and grenades - they were equipped with syringes full of potentially lethal drugs and menacing bonesaws (amongst a few other things).

Piper hadn't had time for her daily coffee dose, a life-saving concoction which she heavily relied on to jolt her into full consciousness each morning. Bless that person who invented caffeine because she'd be truly screwed without it. But the slam of the ER double doors was already kicking her pulse into high gear, her nerve endings primed for whatever would break the sanctity of the eerily quiet emergency room.

It's some four or five hours later when Piper finally finds a window of opportunity to grab a quick snack before she has to throw herself back into the battlefield.

Deep into her thoughts she hurriedly reaches the end of the corridor and pressed the button of the elevator that would take her up to the cafeteria. In medicine every minute counted, and that included her much valued breaks. She's already wasted four minutes answering calls from stressed out interns and residents on her way up.

She's bouncing on the balls of her feet, watching the elevator doors slide open as a group of med students talking animatedly to each other poured out and pushed past her.

Piper's already reaching for the button when she abruptly stops halfway, her hand never completing the action.

Alex is leaning against the far wall, thumbing through her phone, with her head bent down. She's oblivious to Piper's presence, much too engrossed. She's all dark hair falling over shoulders and stethoscope casually strewn over her neck; a sight so achingly familiar it throws Piper entirely off-kilter.

Alex is there - in the flesh and for the first time since coming to work this morning Piper doesn't know what to do. There is no medical protocol or guideline telling her how to react. It's a dim sort of realisation when she figures it's just a freefall right now, nothing but her instincts and visceral longing falling right beside her. There's a split-second panic where she wants to retreat back out, because she's without a harness, and the hurtling drop already looks much too treacherous.

It's too late already - because the doors had already shut.

It's just the two of them now.

"Hey." Piper squirms, contrived and wooden is how it sounds, like she'd practiced the word over and over in a mirror.

Alex looks up from her phone, locking eyes with Piper. Even behind the glasses, Alex's eyes were still that enigmatic deep-green. The same ones Piper had fallen head over heels for all those years ago. For the first time she realises just how truly happy memories could be so painful all at once. There's that emptiness creeping in again, always catching her by surprise.

"Piper?" There's an expression that follows, suspended somewhere between unadulterated happiness and surprise. But then something else takes control, and the smile that was forming never reaches full mast. "What floor did you want?"

Piper feels her heart dropkick in her chest, somehow she'd have far more preferred outright hostility than this neutral and polite act Alex was giving her. "Sixteen...thanks."

They stand in knee deep silence, the only sound the pings from the elevator as it announced the different floors. They're on level six now, and Piper is torn in wanting the elevator to fast-forward its ascent. A few more floors and still nobody joins them.

Her eyes are everywhere but rested on Alex and her hands suddenly do not know where to place themselves. She's a ball of anxious discomfort which is what tilts her into voicing the first random thought that entered her head.

"I've been meaning to thank you for taking that case." Piper huffs a nervous laugh, her voice nearly failing her at the end, "It would've been a different story if McMahon had been the surgeon on call that day."

It teases a smile out of Alex, her face automatically softening. There's a halting moment where Piper thought she would burst into tears, right here in this fucking elevator on a goddamn Monday morning - surrounded by six years worth of baggage. All because the former love of her life had upturned her lips into something more than a passing grimace.

Suddenly she's riding on a momentum of hope and continues, forcing her voice to remain steady,"Good weekend?"

She watches Alex's face drop, before it quickly straightened out again, "Not bad, you?"

Piper watches the elevator reach level nine, a jolt of urgency striking her. They're doing so well, this little microcosm of mutual conversation that isn't riddled with accusations and resentment, something so few and far between. She had another seven levels of conversation left with Alex. "Spent most of my Saturday catching up on Dexter."

Alex looks up, her eyes turning wistful, "You still watch that, huh?"

Piper momentarily stops talking, not able to tear her eyes away from Alex who's own gaze is fixed on the digital display above them. It's automatic and barely a whisper, "You remembered."

"Of course, I remembered." Alex shoves her hands in the pockets of her white coat, her shoulders relaxing, "You were obsessed with that show. How could I ever forget?"

It's an off the cuff rhetorical question, but the way Alex delivers it; the words weighted with familiarity and nostalgia.

Level thirteen.

Suddenly she wished for the elevator to slow down, reverse its ascent even, give her more time. There's a few moments of pleasant silence. Piper leans back against the wall, her heart kicking into overdrive in anticipation.

It's risky. It's bold. It's perilous but above all it's teeming with hope. But most of all it's the truest thing Piper could say, has said, had wanted to say for such a long time. "I've missed you, Alex."

Alex's face remains impassive in a way that unnerves Piper and it has her scrambling to go back in time to take those words back. Sometimes honesty was too much, did too much harm than good or worse - ruined things.

All of that panicked thinking was shattered almost instantaneously when Alex's hand reaches out in response and gently grabs hold of Piper's, all at once breaking the wall they'd erected around themselves. She's much too close, the confines of the elevator shrinking by the heartbeat. Green eyes are burning into Piper's. Nearly a decade's worth of unspoken words passed between them. And by god Alex's hold is still the same; warm and tender, their hands perfectly moulding into each other like no time had passed at all.

"I missed you too."

Ping

The doors slid open, crowds of patients and staff pouring in, the hubbub of people talking over each other desecrating their silence.

Alex is the first to let go. There's a lingering look, she's on the verge of saying something but shuts her eyes instead, like she's fighting some sort of internal battle, before opening them again, and instead murmurs, "I'll see you around, Pipes."

Piper watches her step out and disappear into the throng of the corridor crowds.

She looks down at her hand, she still felt Alex's warmth coating the skin. It happened, it was real.

It occurs to Piper it's the first time in over six years that they touched each other but more than that; held hands.

Head underwater. Head above the water. That feeling like she'd been lost at sea comes bubbling up again, but this time there are calm waters, and the sun's rays manage to filter through the clouds...and there's hope. Because Piper has just caught her first real glimpse of land on the horizon.

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Alex feels her heart finally beginning to slow down. She's somehow ended up in the annexe of the radiology lab, only realising this when she registers the weak glow of x-ray films hanging off the light-boards.

God.

She has to lean against the wall and place her hands against her knees. Over six years and that elevator ride had been the most alive Alex has ever been. A sort of three-dimensional rush that had made her hairs stand on end, and her breath catch in her throat. She hadn't been prepared for the dizzying wave of old nostalgia and timeless emotion that had washed over her in those three minutes. She lifts her head, met by the x-ray of a skull, the whiteness of bone contrasting starkly against the black film.

It was almost unbelievable to the point where she had the sudden urge to tell Piper about it, ask her how she too had felt. Did she also have that same surge of insurmountable intensity running through her nerve-endings? One long surge that ourneyed Alex through every waking moment of their lives together in a matter of seconds?

Her pager punctuates the moment with a harsh jangle before the operator's voice crackled through the speaker. "Surgical consult required in paeds surgery. Surgical cons-"

Alex cuts off the sound, glancing at the skull x-ray one more time, and distantly contemplating whether the room was just too hot or was the moisture trickling out of her eyes right now as a result of goddamn tears.

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"You trying to get yourself nominated for the world's saddest faraway look there, Chapman?" Nicky Nichols ventures into Piper's line of vision, holding an expectant expression in her eyes. She points at the blood bottles Piper is carrying. "I think that blood has now actually turned into stone considering you've been staring at them for just nigh a century."

"Aren't you supposed to be clerking today?" Piper hears the irritation already creeping into her voice. There was something about Nicky's gaze that felt as though she could read every single secret Piper had ever harboured and right now the last thing she wanted was to drop any hints about anything remotely Alex related.

"They were short a doctor for the medical cover so Hebden asked me whether I could spare a hand."

Piper's face probably gave away her skepticism, because Nicky adds, "Obviously I asked for a generous hourly rate." She leans forward and whispers, "Eighty dollars an hour."

"Seriously?"

"Hundred eighty dollars so far, baby and all I've done today is clerk a query subarachnoid and a collapse which from the get go I knew was a simple barn-door faint." She laughs. "I think it's my psychic powers that give me that diagnostic edge."

Piper shrugs her shoulders, "Here you are" She hands her the blood bottles, "You can send that off to the lab seeing as you're milking this hospital dry anyway."

"Hey! It's supply and demand, Chapman. Not my fault my doctoring skills are so well-renowned."

"Keep dreaming, Nichols."

Piper is about to turn on her heel when Nicky's hand stops her, "Hey, you never answered my question, what's with the Sailor's wife reenactment you've had going for most of the day? Even Chief was asking about you."

"What are you talking about?" Piper can already feel Nicky's stare dismantling her flimsily constructed shield. Any minute now and she'd have infiltrated that space where her stupid, stricken heart lay.

"Wait...is this about your girlfriend?"

"I don't have a girlfriend." Piper responds with barely feigned calm and instead focuses all of her collective tact on the bag of bottles. "You really need to take those samples, Nichols."

There's a discernible wobble in her voice that Nicky either chose to ignore or added more fuel to her curiosity fire.

"Are you and Alex not-"

"We're not!" Piper rips out all of a sudden, taking them both by surprise. "We're not anything."

There's an uncomfortable silence that pervades through, louder than the erratic thumping of her heart right now and even louder than the imperious voice at the back of her brain, screaming, why are you lying?

Piper's furiously blinking away the tell-tale blush of embarrassment rushing through her. She's the clinical director of medicine, this should not be happening.

"Sounds like a lot more than just nothing." Nicky observes between narrowed eyes.

Piper feels too exposed all of a sudden. Her hand gestures too close to erratic, "Stop talking. Just...stop talking."

She's out of the door before Nicky had a chance to respond.

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It's late in the evening before Piper has finally shaken off that overwhelmed feeling. Thankfully, the workload had picked up, allowing her not to really simmer over anything apart from trying to keep her patients alive. There was just enough medical chaos to prevent her from sinking into too much introspection.

She's in the surgical department, somewhere she had no business of being but ever since that elevator ride it felt as though Alex handed Piper an olive branch. Piper had grabbed hold of it with both hands but just holding parts of it was not enough, she wanted the whole piece.

She's rewarded when she spots Alex bent over a stack of files. Her eyes are scrunched into concentration, hair tied back, a few tendrils escaping from the loosely held together stronghold. It makes her look younger somehow, take away their surroundings and superimpose that to her college dorm-room and Piper could almost imagine time had rewound back just shy of a decade.

Piper watches Alex walk toward one of the patients. It was a young boy, hooked to monitors, the hospital issued duvet much too large for him, the sheet practically engulfed him. It was long past visiting hours, the last few stragglers heading out, his little face betraying the panicked expression of little children when they're left behind at the gates by their parents on the first day of school.

"Dr Alex?" Piper hears the boy whisper, a tremble in his voice that was much too painful to hear.

Alex turns away from the monitor. "Hmmm?"

"Am I going to die?" The kid's face scrunches into worry, like his own words have just reminded him of his own mortality. His eyes, almost adult-like with their frightened restless gaze. He's no older than eight or nine yet illness made him appear much older, the sunken eyes of someone with ravaged sepsis, the dry cracked lips of dehydration.

Piper almost has to look away, no child should have to come face to face with the impending reality of death and its inescapable finality.

"Hey, hey. Listen bud." Piper watches Alex squat down to eye-level with the boy, her face honest and fiercely sincere, "You're not going to die. You know why? Because I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen."

She leans forward and traces a finger over the right side of his abdomen, "You see I'm going to take out this super tiny bit from you that's making you sick and feel all horrible and in no time you'll be back in school playing with your friends."

"Is it gonna hurt?"

"Absolutely not."

"What's it called again… the bad bit?"

"It's a super fancy word but you're a super smart boy…it's called the appendix."

"And will I have a scar? 'Cause I really want a cool scar like Jonny Yates. He's got a big pink line going all the way from his chest to his tummy and he's always bragging about it and showing it off during physical education even though Mr Davos keeps telling him not to."

Alex chuckles, "It's not going to be quite as big but I think it's going to be enough to show it off to your friends."

"Really?"

Alex leans forward and straightens his nasal cannula administering the oxygen "Really."

"That's so awesome!" His eyes are swimming with excitement before they quickly turn downcast again. He's fidgeting with the line , worrying the tubing around his finger.

He stares at Alex with an earnest look, eyes willing for a more concrete promise. "Promise it's definitely not going to hurt?"

"Tell you what, how about a pinky promise." Alex holds her finger out and wraps it around his before squeezing his shoulder reassuringly.

His smile

Alex stands up, straightening out her white coat and winks at him, "I'll see you on the other side, bud."

Piper's still hovering beside the metal gurneys that were used to wheel people in and out of the OR. She's only half-hidden, as though some part of her wants Alex to know she's here. But an awful hollowness catches her by surprise, causing her to back away. Struck by a stray sense of logic she starts rationalising; Alex didn't want anything to do with her, her niceties and charm were reserved for others but her. That's the hurtful part, and she doesn't think it'll ever go away.

"She's brilliant isn't she?"

Piper whirls around, met by Chief Fontaine peering over her shoulder, his eyes all reverential. "I have yet to meet a surgeon who is both deft with the hands and their words. Usually we make do with either, but we've never had the privilege of someone possessing both."

"She's something else." Piper mutters distractedly as they both watch Alex finish up her writing up who heads off through the double doors at the opposite side, "She really is."

"Dr Chapman, may I ask what's made you venture into the surgical ward?"

"Oh, I-" She scrambles for words, a sheepish expression betraying her when she realises there's no real reasonable excuse for her unsolicited presence here. She meets Fontaine's eyes and decides to settle for honesty instead. Her voice comes out all thin and wavy, "I just came to see Alex. That's all."

He tips his head to one side, "I'm afraid I don't understand. Do you know each other in a personal capacity?"

Piper sighs, "Something like that."

He smiles at her, genuine and warm. "You're crying."

"Sorry, I'm just...I'm just tired." Piper turned away, embarassed wiping her eyes,

Fontaine said nothing, his eyes fixed on where Alex had been stood not long before. The silence seemed to amplify the awkwardness until he rests a comforting hand on her shoulder and says wistfully, "Ever since medical school it's been ingrained into us all to think analytically, use our minds not our hearts, shut ourselves down emotionally. But sometimes, just sometimes however... it's worthwhile to forget all of that and just follow what your heart says."

Piper nods despite the line of conversation. Her throat feels as though it's been tied into knots.

He looks at her, eyes glinting like that of a wise man, "Just some sage advice from an old man who's made a few mistakes of his own in the past." With that ending remark he turns on his heel and walks back out leaving Piper to deliberate his words.

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AN / Hope that delivers. Genuinely would love to hear your thoughts!


	6. It's different now

**6.** It's different now.

* * *

 _AN / Somewhat of a contained chapter but here nevertheless!_

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The cold air circulating around the almost silent operating room was a welcome relief from the cloying stuffy corridors of the hospital. Alex slumps her shoulders, a definitive ache settling deep into her muscles. It's a reminder she'd been stood upright for over two hours, bent over the small drape covered body of her patient. Eight year old Tommy Hartford is her last case of the evening; a simple and straightforward appendicectomy.

She liked the peaceful quiet of the OR. It gave Alex a chance to get her thoughts in order and switch off. There was something comforting about being able to leave the chaos of the world behind at those double doors, and not worry about anything other than making sure her patient was alright. But some thoughts are stronger than others no matter how hard she pretended they weren't there, not even the surgical sterility of the place could hold back the dirt-stained tendrils of childish hope.

Alex renews her hold on the scalpel when the confines of the elevator re-enter her mind...again. She'd been thinking about that. A lot. Thinking about Piper. All goddamn morning, through the rounds, during the daily clinical meeting, when she'd been eating her lunch in the overly noisy canteen, when she'd been walking to her office. Whilst washing her face in the restroom. It was relentless, a never-ending tape that just kept playing and playing, and rewinding. Mercilessly pausing at each and every critical moment.

Alex shifted her weight. It's strange how they'd bounced back into familiar routines so immediately fast. Like a string that had been stretched taut for so long and was finally allowed to be released back to its original form.

Maybe it _was_ that easy. Maybe _she_ was the one over-complicating things unnecessarily and should just cut to the chase and forgive and forget. But then she remembers the six year limbo of nothingness, the desolate days of defying optimism of _she'll come back_ , after the _she wouldn't, she couldn't_ thoughts.

Just like Alex could never have. But she did and she could and she had. It's true what they say about how you never quite learn everything about a person until they do something that surprises you.

It's only when the pain in her jaw crescendoed that Alex realises how hard she's clenching it.

But she wants Piper. It's so simple and straightforward. That was the bare truth of it - without all its frills, excuses and embellishments. That elevator had been a glimpse into a nirvana she thought had been kept purposefully out of her reach. She absently glances at the vitals monitors, content with the numbers.

Alex wanted her back, so what was stopping her?

The scissors nearly slip out of her hand. She clears her throat, eyes briefly shut, trying to force herself to escape from her thoughts. She'd have all night to spend time with them.

"Doc?" The disembodied voice of the anaesthetist breaks the silence.

"Hmmm?" Alex doesn't spare a glance, instead concentrating on placing a clamp around a blood vessel. It's a delicate process that required one hell of a steady hand. She couldn't afford even the slightest of disruptions. The next steps would be to slowly excise the appendix out and close everything up. That was the plan anyway.

"His heart rate is going up."

Alex jerks her head at the monitor just as the trace began furiously flickering, the beeping so rapid it morphed into one long toneless jangle. "It's probably the anaesthesia wearing off...dial the fentanyl up slightly." She carries on clamping, her actions more accelerated. "I'm almost done here anyway."

"No. I've _already_ increased it to maximum a half hour ago. There's something else going on here."

The assistant beside her looks up, drilling his gaze into Alex as though she held all the answers.

Alex halts what she's doing, scalpel hovering mid-air and wordlessly glances at the anaesthetist whose face looks anything but calm. Dr Yates; a veteran amongst surgical circles, was well known for hardly ever breaking a sweat. With more than fifteen years of experience under her belt, it would take more than a few beeping machines to get her to look away from her Kindle and even more for her voice to sound _stressed._

Alex can't help but feel a slow dread snaking its way through her guts, the current reaching her hands. Fingers are suddenly clammy underneath her latex gloves, her breathing steaming up the lenses of her glasses.

Dr Yates, normally calm and collected, was scrambling around the op table, fumbling with various lines and tubing, pushing through syringes full of drugs. The monitor continued to alarm incessantly, the calm quarters of the OR quickly turning into its downstairs counterpart; the ER.

"Helen, what is happening?" Alex asks, surprised at how calm her voice was projecting despite the fact she could hardly hear above the stampede of her own panicked heartbeats.

"I don't know. He doesn't seem to be responding to the adrenaline, or anything that I'm throwing at him." She grabs a metal dish with more syringes and drives through more drugs. "What's his past med history? Any heart problems? Arrhythmias?" She glances up for a second, eyes imploring Alex to give her something, "Anything?"

Alex swallows, "No, nothing."

"I think you're going to have to close him up quick." She gestures. There's an unwanted urgency in those words that racks up Alex's heart rate to nearly match that of Tommy Hartford. Except eight year old Tommy's shows no signs of slowing down, if anything it continues to spike up, the alarms now beginning to transform into an angry squeal.

Yates was now out of her chair. She's twisting the oxygen tube, making sure it hadn't disconnected or obstructed, vainly trying to find a cause of the sudden deterioration. She accidentally pulls on the surgical drape, the top half sliding off, revealing Tommy's slack-jawed face, its colour a horrible pallid gray.

Alex puts the scalpel down for a brief moment, her eyes squeezed shut.

"Vause, you need to close up, _now._ "

Her promise starts bubbling back up, dangling in front of her, _you'll be fine. You'll be out of here in no time. Trust me._

Alex may have just lied to an eight year old.

Yates' voice cuts through, "His rhythm's changing."

Alex's mind is already leaping ahead as she hastily starts closing up, needle through skin and knot. Needle through skin and knot. Her fingers so used to the almost reflexive movements of suturing were now trembling hard. it was taking all of her collective concentration to fight against the rising tide of unease.

"It's heading toward a shit-storm." Someone adds with the kind of explicit detail that turned stomachs.

Everyone in the room directs their eyes at the monitor, watching the flickering green line turn into a patternless nightmare.

"Get the pads out!" Yates yells just as Alex starts compressions. To hell with sterility. She rips off her facemask, the cold air contrasting against the condensation prickling at her skin.

Tommy's fragile ribs are protesting beneath Alex's hard pushes, every shove sending a ripple of guilt through her.

"C'mon bud. Work with me. _Come on!"_

It's like that for over half an hour. Nothing changes. The results the same as trying to run through a wall.

It's Yates, who eventually has the good sense to speak and utter what no one wants to declare, _"_ I think we're going to have call it. He's been-"

"No, no. We're not." Alex hisses out, her words abruptly cutting off Yates' "Have we tried 'tropes or the dopamine?"

No one says anything, the silence cut only by the grotesque sounds of Alex still pounding into his chest.

"I don't think-"

"Just do it, goddammit!"

She's not willing to accept this so easily. No.

She's not willing to accept the inevitable conclusion. Alex tried to ignore the monotonous beep starkly reminding her this _was_ an already lost battle.

She's a doctor, a life saver. An enabler. Someone who follows through with their promises, no matter what.

"Fifteen minutes and no input."

"Blood pressure's gone."

"Pupils fixed and dilated."

Each successive sentence caused her heart to drop a further rung down her chest, the blood roaring in her ears, the resignation in Yates' voice unavoidable.

"Don't stop. He's young and...I made a." There's a heat pricking at the back of her eyes, the tremble in her voice thankfully muffled by the fabric of the surgical mask, "I made a...promise."

"Doc, I don't think we're going to gain much in carrying on. His brain has been starved of oxygen for far too long. We're fighting a battle we've lost long ago."

But she made a promise.

"Alex?"

She said nothing. The eerie silence seemed to magnify her earlier pleas. Alex felt her whole body sagging. She wipes away the sudden cold sweat coating her face. With one singular breath, her voice measured and oddly calm, she uttered, "We're done here."

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It's automatic and almost habitual when Piper detours around the parking lot and walks towards Alex's car. She always parked it in the exact same place every day, and Piper always walked past it, a newly carved routine she'd been participating in for the last few weeks. Piper can't explain why she does it. Maybe it's a perverse way to be close, purely by association.

Tonight was different though.

Where the car was normally empty, it was occupied.

She freezes. Alarmed, Piper hopes Alex hasn't spotted her, and is already rushing toward her own car when she spots a glimpse of her through the window, bent over the steering wheel, head in her hands. And though there was just a smudge of blue scrubs and a head of dark hair visible, Piper knew it was Alex. Years of coupledom and memorising every valley of her body during hazy sex-spent evenings had enabled Piper to leave the simple rules of familiarity and instead had gone beyond the realms of just recognising Alex by face.

There's years of anger and resentment, hurt and loss pulling her away but it's always that inevitable pull that brought her back, much more stronger and unconditional than anything bad that had ever happened between them It's a tug of war, where Piper's long ingrained love for Alex always seemed to win out.

It's the same thing that propels her to knock on the driver's window, and immediately doing away with whatever invisible boundaries they've set themselves, "Alex?"

Nothing.

"Alex?"

Alex slowly lifts her head, but her eyes are glazed over, barely even registering Piper's presence. But what grabs Piper's attention is the face; blotchy and pallid all at once. Her shoulders are sloped and hunched and eyes red and swollen. For a moment Piper feels herself fall through the cracks of the present, hurtling back into the bowels of the past.

Her eyes are already scanning the inside of Alex's car, trying to spot the needle or the syringe or the small mounds of white stuff. Old dormant panic causes her to throw the car door open, her fingers tightly strung, ready to grab hold of things, "Alex, are you okay? What are you doing in here?" As much as she tried to dampen it down, the suspicion in her voice weighs down the worry and concern.

Alex looks like she's participating in a nightmare, "Piper…"

It's enough.

Before she analyses her actions, Piper finds herself alreading rounding the car, and climbs into the passenger seat.

Relief floods through her when she doesn't find the drugs. A quick once over. Alex's pupils are normal sized and she's not slurring her speech. But the relief is short-lived. Alex drops her face into her hands again fighting a losing battle with tears.

The feeling of not knowing what to do, stacks up against Piper's throat. Softly she utters, "Alex, what's _happened?"_

There's nothing. If anything, she looks like she's curling in on herself even further.

Piper rests back against the seat, looking ahead. She leans over the console, hand on Alex's thigh "Alex, you have to talk to me. _Please."_

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All Alex can register in her consciousness is the greyed out body of Tommy lying forlornly on a metal gurney in the basement of the hospital. Rigor mortis has probably set in by now. It's macabre in its thinking but she can't help but juxtapose that against images of Tommy laughing and smiling but most of all, full of _life._

 _Diane Vause_ had been full of life. Wait a minute, was Alex mourning his death or her mother's or both? Or maybe it was something else entirely that was colouring her thinking? The reality hadn't properly sunk in yet.

It's strange. Alex has dealt with the dead and dying. Knew the exact words to tell families. There's a script, the script of death if you like. Every doctor followed it line by line. Word for word. _They're in a better place. now. They're not suffering anymore. She's looking over you now._ _Diane was a good person_. But what exactly is a better place? The cold metal slab in a mortuary? There's no such thing as the end of suffering. Alex should know all about that. The thing is suffering was passed on the families, to loved ones, like a baton made up of pain and grief that you were forced to keep hold of. It was the race without the choice of whether you participated or not. And there was no gold medal at the end of it either, but something much less coveted; forced acceptance.

"Alex, you have to talk to me. _Please."_

Piper's hand is rested on her leg, all concerned and agitated. And her face, so close by. Alex stiffens, forcing herself to look out of the window where her eyes fall on the concrete partitions of the parking lot, reminded yet again of metal gurneys and grey-faced children. Her stomach ties itself into painful knots, a heave of something miserable ripping through its walls all over again.

It's so goddamn soft, the concern overflowing, "Alex..."

It sends shockwaves through every millimeter of skin, nerve endings disintegrated by the sudden electric rush of Piper's hands stroking her hair, the soft pads of her fingers trailing the side of her face.

Alex's eyes close of their own accord and she feels herself fall back into the moment.

There's a fraction of a second where Alex sees ahead of time, a window of sense where she stopped, but an almost earth-shattering _want_ propels her forward, eradicating every sane and logical thought she ever possessed.

The kiss is violent and messy. Alex kissed her, her lips moulding right into Piper's.

Piper responded, reciprocal want won out over the initial surprise. She kissed back harder, tongue pushed deep into Alex's mouth. Long firm strokes that matched her own. This went beyond the simple remits of physical want instead it was a fervent and frantic desire to reconnect, to see whether the pieces still fit and worked and, above all still caused that sparkle to ignite.

Lips slam against each other and Alex feels her hands snake under Piper's top, running the tips of her fingers over warm and familiar skin. She hears Piper gasp into her ears, and by fucking god, it's like a waterfall of relief deluged every worry, every doubt and every ounce of anger Alex had ever possessed. It even erased the almost permanent picture of Tommy that seemed to have imprinted onto the centre of her vision.

She's tugging at the waist of Piper's scrub pants, fingers desperate to touch.

There's a veer in direction, "Alex, not here."

Alex can hardly hear over the explosion of senses, the rush of blood roaring through her ears. She resumes her kisses, insistent and barely coasting over skin. She can feel the push and pull of Piper's lips on hers. But there's no heat from her mouth, no real effort.

Piper murmurs, "I don't think…" She trails off, "We shouldn't…we really shouldn't."

It's almost like a last ditch attempt; Alex's hands travel up off their own accord, roaming everywhere, trying to hold all of Piper at once. There's an urgency to her actions, like she has to go through this ritual before she too comes to her senses.

Piper's head suddenly wrenches away from her, "Alex, I said stop!"

Alex feels herself being pushed away, her back slumped against the car door, dazed.

Piper leans back into the seat, rearranging her top and intently staring ahead. A stifling silence pervades through the space, doing away with the last remnants of whatever had been created between them.

"What's the problem?" Alex murmurs eventually, her throat tightening up with embarrassment and hurt. The worried sensation buzzing at the back of her head, balloons to an even bigger size. Piper is barely looking at Alex, her hands fumbling too much for it to simply be a problem with their location.

Her voice, so unassuming, "We're in your car. _Anybody_ could walk by."

Alex shrugs her shoulders, "It's after hours, there's nobody even here."

Heavy silence.

Piper exhales a weary sigh, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have...it's my fault."

Alex can feel a cold kind of misery setting in — the rush from earlier had already disappeared. For a moment it feels like she's coming off one of her old highs, the horrible flu-like ache interwoven with that about to be sick feeling. She rafts the question away and comes up with her own, "Why did you even come, Piper?"

It's not sarcastic, it's not challenging. It's a pure and genuine question that Alex can't work her way around to find the answer. The thing is, it's hurtful. Alex can feel the hurt plucking out of her skin with each passing minute.

It's that fairytale ending that kept ramrodding through her logical thinking, misleading her and creating these could-be scenarios. Kiss each other better and there, all of it is solved. Erase the past, just like heavy rain did to dirt. That's what she wants, a chance for Piper to ask and for Alex to happily answer _yes._

"I thought you were…" Piper stops herself but Alex already feels the rest of the statement piercing into her brain. She can read it clear as day, written all over Piper's face.

"You thought I was back on the drugs, didn't you?"

"You don't know how you looked when I walked by, Alex. You honestly cannot blame me for thinking it."

"Five years."

"I know. I'm sorry." Guilt is swimming between her eyes. Alex's transfixed it by it, it's something she used to see all the time when she faced herself in the mirror.

"Five years, Piper."

 _Five years and three months to be more precise. Look Pipes, I've even got the five year sobriety coin to prove it. Do you want to see? Look how clean I am, look how not of a fucking junkie loser I am anymore. It's great isn't it? So fucking fantastic._

Piper continues, "I just wanted to see how you were." Her voice catches, "But I didn't expect this. I didn't want _this."_

Alex wasn't counting on that. How dare she come to her with her bullshit excuses when her agenda was as clear as day. "Well next time come with a disclaimer beforehand, that way we both know exactly what to expect."

One step forward. Two steps back.

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	7. I just replay it, love I think of you

**7.** I just replay it, love. I think of you all of the time.

* * *

 _Massive thanks, each and everyone one of you._

 _(To OzisOz, I'm the hopeless Dexter fan, gotta project some of that onto Piper ;) and to the guest who's off on a trip. Hope the update was just in time :) )_

 _flashbacks in italics._

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It has been nearly three hours.

Alex was still sat in her car, the dank surroundings of the deserted parking lot casting long shadows over the interior. Winter had stayed with a vengeance - frigid air seeped through the half-open car window - numbing her face and lips. The biting cold together with the bitter gloom crept into Alex like damp moist into weathered wood. She couldn't remember exactly how long she'd been in the car, couldn't even remember the journey from there to here.

Alex stared out of the windscreen, unblinking and not really registering anything. She briefly wrenches her gaze away to bring cigarette number five to her mouth, or maybe it was six. Or seven? It doesn't matter, she was already thinking of lighting the next one.

Somewhere the wail of an ambulance siren pierced through the thick undercurrent of silence, the echoes slowly fading back into the dark. Alex felt so damn empty. That was the only real word that came close to describing the feeling like she was untethering from reality, slipping away into someplace that held no discernible purpose. The exhale of smoke was long and fluttering.

She knows she should be angry with herself, pushing Piper away like that. But her anger, was channeled toward her own stupidity. Was she really that misguided into thinking their kiss was going to lead to something else. Not sex, but a step toward some kind of reconciliation.

 _I didn't expect this. I didn't want this._

Piper's words ride through the cold mist and re-enter her consciousness. The words are sharp and effective. Twisting themselves into Alex's chest, messy and completely unlike the nice, clean cuts she makes in surgery.

Surgery. Fuck.

Tommy.

Fuck.

Piper.

 _"Are we ever going to do any actual work or are we just going to make out every waking second?" Piper asks with a semi-weary sigh. They're tangled together on the world's tiniest sofa at Alex's house, after spending no more than a few minutes trying to revise for their upcoming semester exams. Piper blames Alex and her surprisingly persuasive ways to get her to shut her textbook and make out instead. It's nearly one am, the mellow summer breeze wafting through the open shutter windows, and the television the only source of light in an otherwise pitch black living room._

 _"No to the former and a big fucking yes to the latter." Alex leans back, staring into Piper's eyes with teasing mirth, "Besides we're at my mom's house; there's an unwritten rule no academic book shall ever be opened within its walls."_

 _Piper gently slaps Alex's hand away when it cheekily starts trawling back under her shirt again, "And who made this rule, may I ask?"_

 _"I did, of course."_

 _"And your mom is totally okay with this?" Piper sits back up, absently stroking Alex's hair. "You know me just turning up unannounced at your house. You're definitely sure?"_

 _"Pipes, relax." Alex places a reassuring kiss on her cheek, her fingers curling around the thin fabric of her top. "You'll love my mom, honestly."_

 _"Yeah?"_

 _"Mmhm."_

 _"Well my mom would have a heart attack if people didn't give her at least three weeks' notice. Six weeks if it's in the evening and it involves a barbecue."_

 _"I promise, no written requests required here. Anyway, enough of parents." Alex swings Piper's arms back, straddling her at the hips, teasing hands exploring the outline of her ribs, her body becoming flush with hers. "Let me feel your body."_

 _"Is this your idea of anatomy revision?" Piper turns her lips into a smile._

 _"How else do I get to learn?" Alex wiggles herself forward and kisses the nape of her neck. One kiss becomes two and then three…soon Piper loses all restraint and throws herself into the heat. It's maybe a minute or so later when they both catch their breaths._

 _Piper gazes into Alex's eyes, no more than an inch away from hers. They're playful behind her glasses, and a touch of something sweetly tender swirling in between. She could look at that face all night, the way her eyes crinkled at the corners, how her whole face seemed to project total visceral happiness. Piper was suddenly hit by a need to declare her feelings, "You know I love you, right?"_

 _Alex tilts her head back with complete dramatic effect, "Woah, you do?"_

 _"Jesus Al, I'm trying to be serious here." Piper tries to jostle her face into a not-impressed expression but fails when Alex softly rests her forehead against hers._

 _"I love you too, you moron. To the world's end and back."_

 _"You always know when to say the right thing." Piper laughs, her voice suddenly way too shaky._

 _"I'm good like that, aren't I?" Alex pulls her glasses off, "Enough talking now. C'mere."_

 _Lips once again reunited, and their hands searching for the warmth of each other's skin._

For an awful second it feels as though Alex had been sucked through a wormhole, ending up in some twisted alternate reality where she can ask her mom for advice.

She's been dead for years, though. The grief now more a distant feeling that anything vaguely tangible. Hell, she doesn't think she'd be able to let go of the rawness of her parting, even it was sixty fucking years down the line.

Suddenly she wants to call her, Diane — explain everything that is to explain. Diane would tell her what to do. Diane would explain why Alex was feeling the way she was. It's an almost childlike rush, one without much reason or logic but Alex suddenly contemplates driving to her grave. She dimly realises she hasn't been for over a year, something which startles her into shame.

It's rush hour traffic when she finally pulls the car out of the hospital grounds, possibly the worst time to venture out of the city but Alex owed it to her mom. Focusing on negotiating the heavy New York traffic allowed her to switch off from her mind. A damn welcome relief.

 _Both Alex and Piper do not hear the door gently click open and close, and it's only when the room is flooded with light, that they jump off each other._

 _Piper accidentally kicks Alex in the stomach causing her to lose balance and slide off the sofa, landing on the floor in an undignified semi-naked heap._

 _"Mom?!" Alex gasps, hands frantically patting down the sofa for her glasses and unnecessarily declaring, "You're home!"_

 _"Are you looking for these?" Diane bends down and picks up the stray glasses off the floor. She turns to Piper, cocking her head in an action uncannily similar to Alex, "And you must be Piper, honey."_

 _Diane Vause was all untamed hair, glittering eyes, and barely held back laughter, "Ah to be young and free again." She turns to Alex who's too busy sheepishly buttoning her shirt back up, "No wonder you've not been picking up my calls."_

 _"Mom, what are you doing here?" Alex finally seems to have found her voice, her face a picture of both comical horror and that fuck I've been caught by the parent embarrassment. She quickly gathers herself up, hastily pulling on her pants. Piper's doesn't think she's ever seen Alex's face look so flaming red._

 _Diane though seems completely unbothered by this whole entire scene, "Al, last I checked, I too, live here."_

 _She turns to Piper and smiles, "I hope you've taught our Alex at least some basic manners. Trust me hon, I've been trying to do just that for the last twenty-three years and I'm still at it."_

 _Piper didn't know what to do with such candid information, so instead did her best polite smile._

 _Diane suddenly throws her head back, "Where are my goddamn manners? Diane Vause."_

 _Piper steals a glance at Alex. This was not how she envisioned her first ever meeting with Alex's mom to be going. "Uh, nice to meet you…Ms Vause."_

 _Before Piper has time to consider what she should say next, Diane leans forward and envelopes her into a tight hug before stepping back. "Ms Vause?" She echoes back. "Jesus, I can feel another twenty years being added to my age right now. Just Diane, dear." She walks the few steps to the fridge and throws it open, grabbing herself a drink, "I like to kid myself and pretend I'm not that old."_

 _She points at Alex, "You know you should've told me Piper was coming, I would have got off shift this evening. Woulda given me a good excuse to escape the friday happy hour."_

 _Piper glances at Alex, "I'm sorry, ma'am. I mean Diane…I should have asked Alex to tell you much earlier-"_

 _"Hey, you're welcome anytime here, dear. If anything I'm glad to have someone to talk to that isn't Alex."_

 _"Hey!" Alex interjects. "I happen to be a great story-teller." She nudges her, "Tell her, Pipe."_

 _It's maybe the first time Piper feels herself relax, even manages to smile. She can clearly see where Alex gets all of her sincerity and warmth from. Diane treated her like an old friend, immediately doing away with all those stranger boundaries and chatting to her like they'd known each other for years._

 _"You know, Piper. I was beginning to think you weren't actually real and just someone our Al was making up to impress me."_

 _"Really, mom?" Piper can't help but smile when she catches Alex's face segue into a sarcastic expression, but it was the tinge of pink that gave her away._

 _"It's true." Diane sits down with her drink, "The way this girls talk about you. She's very lucky to have you, honey."_

 _It's automatic, before she has time to filter her words, Piper hears herself muttering, "I'm lucky to have her."_

 _Alex's eyes visibly soften, and it's maybe the first time she doesn't say anything in return._

 _Piper feels her head spin with sudden happiness, an intense rush of affection suddenly overwhelming her._

The rain was hammering it when Alex finally arrived at the cemetery some two hours later. The storm had turned the normally dry soil into a muddy sludge that swallowed her shoes nearly whole. She walks the usual worn route that traversed through countless identical headstones before she reaches and stops in front of Diane's. She's soaking through, hair plastered onto her forehead as the rain continued to beat down.

Whoever had coined the phrase time fixes wounds was lying through their teeth or simply hadn't experienced anything so wilfully and incomprehensibly bad - it had the capability to destroy everything in its wake.

Alex catches a glimpse of the rectangular headstone, silhouetted by the moon behind it. The only thing that evidenced Diane Vause's existence on this planet. It made the whole scenery that much more haunting somehow, the off-casted silver hue an invitation for Alex to mourn in just the right circumstances.

But it was just a fucking slab of concrete stone dunked in mud. Nothing more, nothing less.

 _"Hey Piper, love." Diane stands up and walks over to the cupboard, reaching out for a box on the top shelf. "Do you want to see pictures of Alex as a baby, you're not going to believe how fucking adorable she used to be."_

 _"What are you talking about, mom." Alex throws a wink at Piper, "I'm still adorable."_

 _"See, Piper?" Diane rolls her eyes, "This is the mid-twenties snark I have to deal with on a daily basis."_

 _"What does that even-"_

 _Piper interrupts her, "Alex, it's one am and I suddenly crave for nothing else but to see your baby pics."_

 _"I'm going to have to leave the room…this can get dangerously soppy." Alex mock-protests._

 _"Sit down. Me and Pipes are gonna do some bonding over you and you have to stay just in case we feel like teasing you."_

 _Diane upturns the box and out slide maybe a dozen photographs, "I've never had a chance to stick them in an album."_

 _Piper can't help but pick one up at random, and has to hold back a giant smile. She's holding up possibly the cutest photo of a baby she's ever seen, "Wow, Alex. You look so cute with those chubby cheeks. You were like the baby every grandma wants to knit woolly sweaters for."_

 _"Right? Every time I'd take her outside I would have to spend at least half my time trying to fend people away from her. People loved her" Diane nudges Piper conspiratorially, "I loved the attention, though."_

 _Piper bursts out laughing, when she holds up another photo of maybe a three year old Alex covered head to toe in mud, holding an expression not too dissimilar to the one she was sporting now. "She doesn't look all that happy does she?"_

 _Diane laughs, "Look at those strawberry blonde highlights. She looks fucking adorable."_

 _Alex sourly interjects, "This is like the definition of torture. You two are just being gross now."_

 _"Oh my god, and this one!" Piper pulls out another picture, this one was Alex sat in a bath, maybe around four or five, smiling at the camera, all gap-toothed and soap-covered body. "I think I might actually die from cuteness overload."_

 _"That's it, you two." Alex stands up, "I'm going have to disinvite myself from this embarrassment of a spectacle. Let me know when you guys are done."_

 _Diane winks at Piper, "Piper, hon. You'll be glad to hear I've got another box once we're done here."_

 _Piper can't help but declare after Alex, "Don't wait up, Al! I think we're going to be a while here."_

Alex started to cry in earnest. There's no warning but it's as though her body understands that this is the next logical thing that should happen. The last time she had cried any real tears was a year ago at this exact spot.

Her body started to shake with grief. She placed her fist above on top of the gravestone, ramming it into the granite surface, scratching the skin raw and not even caring.

Alex took a deep breath, sucking in the anger leaking out of her. Her lips trembled threateningly, a shake rattling through her — body already betraying her. There was a strange noise that joined the night sounds. Vaguely familiar. Too late Alex realised it was her own sobs. The dry-heaving, stuttering kind that were always so difficult to control. And she hated that. The lack of control, even at her mother's grave.

Wiping her eyes with the end of her sleeve, she bends forwards and places a single rose over the grave, the previous from all those months ago had shrivelled into a lifeless form.

She almost forces a dark laugh, the futility of life so perfectly symbolised. Her mother would have fucking laughed at how contrived flowers at a grave really were. Teasing the dead with life before that too wilted away. It's fucking sickening really, the cruel irony of it.

As she walks back to her car Alex doesn't dwell on the thought that she may have been mourning the loss of more than one person. A loss different in more ways than one.

 _It's a few hours later since Piper had gone home. Alex and her mom were sat outside on the balcony, the night sky inky, the bursts of light from shooting stars catching their eyes every so often._

 _"She's nice." Diane's voice turned serious in the dark, and it's maybe the first time it wasn't all tease and lightheartedness. "I'm happy for you, babe."_

 _"Yeah?" Alex replies casually even though she can feel her mouth go dry, a heated blush meandering its way around her face._

 _"Hmmm, she's definitely a keeper."_

 _"Thanks, mom." Alex sat back, a joyous, unexpected rush permeating through her body. Piper had swept into her life without so much as a warning, the way a soft breeze would eddy in through an open window, carrying with it the warmth and brightness of summer itself. Sometimes Alex asked herself what she did to even deserve a fraction of her._

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Alex has barely shut the front door behind her when a voice rings out in the dark, "Hey, you're home."

Alex almost has to remind herself that someone other than herself lived in this apartment too. She's greeted by the sight of Sarah sat at the kitchen island, her eyes betraying she'd been up all night, an empty glass of wine sat beside her, next to an even more empty bottle.

"Late shift." Alex murmurs, suddenly feeling as though she's been forced to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders.

There was a faint edge "Was it all outdoors?"

"What?"

"Your clothes. You're wet through."

"I uh..." Alex falters. She felt as though she was frozen into place, her hand clutching onto her car keys. In the end all she did was shrug.

There's a protracted silence that follows through, but Alex had no real intention of filling it, instead she mutters some half-hearted apology about needing sleep, and is already walking away.

She can feel tears itching at her eyes, her heart feels so old and used. The fucked up thing was, she can't figure out who exactly she's crying for or maybe doesn't really know. Or doesn't want to know. The gnawing nausea grabs hold of her again, remembering the car and the crying and Piper. And...and that toneless beep from doomed heart monitors, that have now become part of her hearing. And then there are the disjointed voices, raised and panicked, and half a dozen pairs of eyes, all lasering into her. The memories fling through her, images that kept ending with the lifeless face of Tommy Hartford.

"Alex, I'm leaving."

Shock should now take over. But there's nothing, if anything Alex can't decide between leaving the prison of her own internal memories or to re-enter her apartment and face Sarah's glacial expression. She turns around anyway.

There's a sigh, long and regretful, "I'm going to stay with my parents for a while. I've been uh...I've been planning it for a while." There's an air of finality to that statement that coats over the words. "I think we need to take a break, Alex. I don't think we've been seeing eye to eye for a while."

Alex's first impulse is to protest, but she finds herself nodding in acceptance. She's ran out of emotions to display and all she really wants to do right now, is peel out of these damp clothes, and just head off to sleep.

"I really didn't want to do this, Alex. I don't know what the fuck is going on with you but all I know is that its sucking everything good out of your life." Alex stays silent. Sarah's speaking more freely now. "I think...I think it will both do us some good."

Alex didn't ask whether this was something of a permanent nature, nor did she point out why Sarah looked fully dressed like she was already going somewhere.

All Alex did was nod and nod and nod.

"Well, aren't you going to say anything?"

It's difficult to concentrate, the cold shivers distracting her. "What do you want me to say? You've clearly already made your decision." Alex shoots back. No way in fucking hell is she going to hand Sarah the spectacle of desperately trying to stop her or even worse _beg_ her from leaving. God fucking no. Alex had already tried that method six years prior. It hadn't worked then, it sure as hell wouldn't work here. Fuck.

"They're in Ohio. My parents, they live in Ohio." Sarah says more softly. "My mom works part time for a law office and she's on leave at the moment, and you know my dad wants me to come and see her…"

Actually Alex doesn't know. Doesn't know the faintest about Sarah's parents, has never even met them in the years they'd been together.

Piper had.

Piper knew everything about Alex's mom. In fact, they'd been the best of friends.

The thought strikes out of nowhere, too tangible for it to be a simple passing mental acknowledgement.

There's that moment again; random snapshots of her past. Nothing that ever made any particular sense, just snippets of faces, places or pieces of dialogue canvassing through her.

It brings on an anger somehow, this relentless flood of misdirected, belated fury. "Go then, what are you waiting for, Sarah."

Unable to hide her surprise Alex watches Sarah walk toward the bedroom before appearing some minutes later, this time wheeling a suitcase that looked as though it contained at least a couple of months' worth of clothes. The heat in her stomach immediately extinguishes, "You're going now?"

"Jeez, I've been packing this thing for at least a week…you hadn't even noticed?"

Alex steadies herself, "I'm sorry I've been too busy with my own shit to notice your grand leaving do, my fucking apologies."

Alex falls back against the sofa, suddenly spent. Her feet were aching and the muddy coldness from the cemetery was still clinging onto her like infallible snake skin. She wanted nothing more than to dissolve right into the fabric of the sofa and just get passed this moment in her life already.

"Jesus Christ. I'll fucking call you when I get there." Sarah hissed. The harsh echoing of the opened and slammed door is what Sarah's farewell sounds like.

Pathetic and mournful and erratic are what Alex's thoughts sound like.

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The strong smell of antiseptic detergent ran sharp through her nostrils. Piper had just entered the ER having completely forgotten she was supposed to be leading a bedside teaching session she'd been rallied into by the education lead some weeks back. The usual pandemonium and general chaotic landscape of the place was non-existent today.

The LCD screens detailing patient admissions were ominously blank, even the expected ambulance arrival sheet was clean. It made Piper edgy. The quiet before the storm, perhaps. She knew from past experience that this level of quiet usually forewarned an impending avalanche of medical anarchy.

She turned the corner, her heart immediately sinking when she noticed the group of residents ambling around the main desk, their faces conspicuously impatient. Piper almost decided to retreat back but was caught out when one of the more eagle-eyed amongst them spotted her and nudged the others to attention.

She takes a deep breath, and walks up to them, "Right, there's a query prozac overdose in cubicle four and a possible acute gastritis in sixteen, take your pick."

There was never any room for apologies in this business, it was synonymous with being weak-willed and gave people an invitation to trample all over you. Medicine was ruthless and never spared any casualties. Piper had grown and adapted to this dog eat dog world.

She's pulling out the obs chart when an out of nowhere cold sensation hits her like lightning, suddenly transporting her back to the confines of that dark sedan in the parking lot a week ago. This time it's in a slow-mo reel, forcing her to focus on every little moment with meticulous attention. It was eating her up from the inside out, if it wasn't drugs what had got Alex into the state she was in that night? Was it something Piper did? Hadn't done? It doesn't matter anyway, Piper had already fucked things up, regardless of the cause.

"But Dr Chapman…we were supposed to have a neurology case this week." One of the residents protests, thankfully rescuing Piper from her thoughts.

She clears her throat, "There's two patients in this whole department, so if you can point out the imaginary third case, Hughes. By all means."

Piper takes the silence as a sufficient answer and leads the group, trying to shake off the remnants of cold still clinging on to her skin.

They've approached the first patient. She can already feel herself switching off, absently watching one of the residents examining the patient. It's half hour later, having barely registered anything when she finds herself finishing up with the last patient.

Gun to head, Piper couldn't recall a single thing she had jabbered at the group nor could she remember anything said to her. How could she when her mind was already saturated with Alex? Piper wondered whether she'd ever be able to carry on with her everyday life without the image or thought of Alex popping into her head at every god given moment.

"Dr Chapman?" She returns to reality, faced with the podgy-faced resident who'd hardly spoken through the course of the teaching.

"What?"

He frowns, glancing back at his peers, "I asked whether there were any other diagnoses to consider in the context of right sided abdominal pain."

She really had to make more of an effort in anchoring herself to the present, "It's mainly surgical causes." Piper sighs, "Save that for your surgical teaching with Dr Vause next week."

The name suddenly sparked interest amongst the group together with a very noticeable uptick in hushed whispers. The residents glance at each other, their faces uncomfortably sheepish.

Piper feels the hairs on the back of her neck rise, a low-grade stress swooping through her stomach, "What?"

There's a palpable pause, until the more ballsy member of the group speaks up, "Haven't you heard?"

"Heard what?"

"Uh, y'know the paeds appendix case from last week in OR four...the one with Vause's, I mean Dr Vause's young patient."

Hughes speaks, "They were finishing up when..."

"The poor kid died on the table." A red-haired girl adds, determined not to be left out in imparting this hot piece of gossip. "There's word it might turn into a negleg case."

Negleg case or m _edical negligence._ The most dreaded of all accusations a doctor could face in their career. There's too much air trapped in Piper's lungs and her mouth seems to have clamped itself shut.

It all made sense now.

In a barely held together haze Piper dismisses the group, her mind racing ahead as she acknowledged this piece of information.

She had to tell Alex.

Her pace stalls when a new thought catches up with her, the thought so significant it stifles her breathing and fills her stomach with lead.

How could she when Alex doesn't want anything to do with her?

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End file.
